Multiple simultaneous discrete optimization problems

Dear all,

my question is based off of this example:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/gads/solving-a-mixed-integer-engineering-design-problem-using-the-genetic-algorithm.html

but with the following change.

In the example we had to optimize the volume of one beam for the given P, L, σmax, δmax.

What I would like to do is to optimize the volume (same x(i)s - i=1:10) for three different beams having different P, L, σmax, δmax.

Then I would like a report showing the smallest volume if I have to use only one, two, three, etc. beams.

Do you think it's doable?

Thanks

[John D'Errico]

Of course it is doable!

WRITE THE CODE. Is there a reason why a loop is a bad thing?

for i = 1:3
  solve problem i
end

You cannot do anything until you start writing though.

[Konstantinos Belivanis]

A loop doesn't seem to work well with functions. The reason is that:

1. The number of variables is a function of the number of beams I want to use.

2. I can't have variables in a function (or at least I don't know how).

Again to explain what I would like to do:

What I would like to do is to optimize the volume (same x(i)s - i=1:10) for three different beams having different P, L, σmax, δmax.

And I would like to get the best result if I were to have one beam that was satisfying the three of them (waste of material but maybe fabrication costs would go down) or two beams or three beams.

[James Wiken]

A loop should work fine with functions. I understand the number of variables changes based on the number of beams you are optimizing for. You can write functions that can take a varying number of inputs to handle this. To accomplish this, reference the documentation links for 'varargin' and 'nargin' below:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/varargin.html

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/nargin.html

Answer 1

[Konstantinos Belivanis]

Solved by just entering more parameters in the function. And doing the loop outside of it.

If anybody has the same issue, I can provide more info.