Optimal design of low- and high-rise building structures by Tribe-Harmony Search algorithm

In this paper, optimum design of building structures is conducted by metaheuristic algorithms due to the shortcomings of the conventional design methods in providing economical designs. The Harmony Search (HS) is utilized as the main algorithm which was developed based on the musical process of searching for the optimal condition of harmony to produce an appropriate search approach for design optimization purposes. Besides, the Tribe-Harmony Search (Tribe-HS) algorithm is also proposed for the first time in this paper to improve the performance of the HS algorithm which divides the HS's searching phase into three distinct phases called "tribes", lead the primary algorithm to prioritize global search in the early iterations while resolving local search in the later iterations. Three building structures with 135, 3860, and 8272 structural members are used as design examples to demonstrate the suggested method's capacity to solve challenging optimization problems. The recommended method's overall performance is compared to that of the conventional Harmony Search algorithm and ten alternative metaheuristic algorithms using a total of 30 independent runs in each instance for statistical reasons. The findings demonstrated that the suggested method outperformed the other metaheuristics for the study design instances.