Design of steel frames by an enhanced moth-flame optimization algorithm

Structural optimization is one of the popular and active research areas in the field of structural engineering. In the present study, the newly developed moth-flame optimization (MFO) algorithm and its enhanced version termed as enhanced moth-flame optimization (EMFO) are employed to implement the optimization process of planar and 3D steel frame structures with discrete design variables. The main inspiration of this optimizer is the navigation method of moths in nature called transverse orientation. A number of benchmark steel frame optimization problems are solved by the MFO and EMFO algorithms and the results are compared with those of other meta-heuristics. The obtained numerical results indicate that the proposed EMFO algorithm possesses better computational performance compared with other existing meta-heuristics.