Materials

& Design
Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981
www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Material selection using an improved Genetic Algorithm for

material design of components made of a multiphase material
a,*
Xiu-Juan Zhang , Ke-Zhang Chen b, Xin-An Feng c

a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian Jiaotong University, Dalian 116028, China
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
c
School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Received 5 September 2006; accepted 23 March 2007

Available online 13 May 2007

Abstract

A component may be made of different materials in its different regions to satisfy different requirements from its applications. The
materials can be homogeneous ones and heterogeneous ones that include composites, functionally graded materials and heterogeneous
materials with a periodic microstructure. For such a component, its design should be implemented from function requirements to its
geometry, to material properties, and to material microstructures and/or constituent compositions. This paper develops a detailed
approach and its corresponding computer software prototype for selecting optimal material constituent compositions and microstruc-
tures according to the determined or optimized material properties using an improved Genetic Algorithm. As an example for applying
the approach and the corresponding software prototype, the material selection of different regions for a special cantilever beam made of
multiphase materials is also described in the paper.
 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm; Family tree; Component made of multiphase materials; Material selection; Component design

1. Introduction through: (1) designing the component’s configuration using

To meet all the special requirements from high-tech
applications and make the best use of different materials,
it would be necessary to use components made of different
materials optimized in its different regions, including
homogeneous materials and three types of heterogeneous
materials (i.e., composites, functionally gradient materials,
and heterogeneous materials with a periodic microstruc-
ture). Such components are named as the components
made of a multiphase material (CMMMs). The method
for designing such a component should be implemented
from function requirements to its geometry, to material
properties, and to material microstructures and/or constit-
uent compositions. The design procedure [1] should go
* the working requirements of the component, determining
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 0411 8410 6734; fax: +86 0411 8410
9249.
E-mail address: zhangxiuj@djtu.edu.cn (X.-J. Zhang).
conventional CAD technologies according to the require-
ments from its application; (2) determining optimal
material properties needed in different regions of the com-
ponent using the sensitivity analysis and optimization
based on its working conditions; (3) selecting optimal
material constituent compositions and microstructures
from a related material database using an improved
Genetic Algorithm to satisfy the material properties deter-
mined in Step (2); and (4) optimizing the parameters of the
component configuration based on the material selection
result obtained in Step (3) using the finite element analysis.
The first and fourth phases belong to the geometric design
that is well developed. The second phase concentrates on
the optimization of material properties which includes sev-
eral steps, i.e., creating optimization model according to
optimization method, calculating material property sensi-
tivities, determining optimization step length, searching

0261-3069/$ - see front matter  2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2007.03.026
 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981
for optimum material properties. The details for the second
phase have already been introduced in Refs. [1,2]. This
paper develops a detailed approach for the third phase
and its corresponding computer software prototype. As
an example for applying the approach and the software
prototype, the material selection of a special cantilever
beam made of multiphase materials is also described.
2. Requirements of selecting materials
After determining the optimal material properties needed
in different regions of a component in the second phase, opti-
mal material microstructures and/or constituent composi-
tions should be selected from a related material database.
There may be many suitable material constituent composi-
tions and microstructures that have the properties close to
or a bit higher than the optimal material properties
determined for each region of the component. Among them,
the most suitable one should be selected with the best mate-
rial affinities of adjacent regions, the lowest material cost,
and the lowest manufacturing cost. As far as the material
constituent composition is concerned, the regions with the
similar material constituent composition can be aggregated
into a larger region, and thus the component can be divided
into several regions which form a set of different material
constituent composition regions. For the material micro-
structure, the regions with the similar material microstruc-
ture can also be combined into a larger region, and thus
the component can be divided into several regions which
form a set of different material microstructure regions. It is
obvious that the material selection for the two sets needs a
suitable optimization method. Since some of these objective
functions and constraints can only be expressed in the form
of implicit functions with discrete variables and discontinu-
ous and/or non-convex design spaces, traditional optimiza-
tion methods fail to solve these optimization problems.
Fortunately, Genetic Algorithm [3] is a powerful stochastic
search and optimization technique based on principles from
evolution theory, and can find the global optimum solutions
with high probability for such optimization problems.
Therefore, Genetic Algorithm is applied to determine the
optimal material microstructures and/or constituent com-
positions for the different regions of a component.
However, since design requirements for CMMMs are
very critical sometimes, the materials and/or microstruc-
tures satisfying the optimized properties of some material
regions are limited and thus the population size of Genetic
Algorithm may be small. Although small population size
can bring a high convergence speed, chromosomes would
be very similar after several generations. It is obvious that
the probability for generating new offspring is small and
the probability of invalid genetic operations is great when
parent chromosomes are very similar. For example, parent
chromosomes have two different genes which are the fourth
and seventh genes, respectively. When the crossover point
is selected between the third and the fourth genes as shown
in Fig. 1, two offsprings are the same as their parents and
973
Parent 1 offspring 1
crossover point
Parent 2 offspring 2
Fig. 1. Crossover operations.
the crossover operation performed is invalid. The phenom-
enon is very similar to the inbreeding of nature and will
induce the local optimum of optimization, and magnify
small sampling errors [10]. Several modifications [4,5] have
been performed such as changing code method, optimiza-
tion interval, mutation operator, crossover operator, or
crossover probabilities. However, they cannot ultimately
solve the problem mentioned previously because they can-
not effectively evaluate the degree of similarity between
chromosomes and validly avoid the genetic operations
among similar chromosomes when population size is small.
Thus, for Genetic Algorithm with a small population size,
how to effectively evaluate the degree of similarity between
chromosomes is very important. According to the genetics
principles, the degree of similarity between chromosomes is
closely related to their kinship. For example, chromosomes
in a lineal consanguinity have a higher degree of similarity
than those in a collateral consanguinity. Therefore, an
improved Genetic Algorithm and its corresponding com-
puter software prototype were developed based on ‘family
tree’ in this paper.
3. An improved Genetic Algorithm
3.1. Evaluating the degree of homology
3.1.1. Inbreeding coefficients
In genetics, the inbreeding coefficient F is defined as the
probability, with which a chromosome derives a pair of
alleles from an ancestor [6], and is a quantity index for
expressing the inbreeding extent between two chromosomes.
The inbreeding coefficient F for two kinless chromosomes is
equal to 0 and that for the chromosome and itself is equal to
1. In genetics, there are mainly two types of inbreeding
methods which are self-fertilization and sibmating.
(1) Self-fertilization
The self-fertilization is the most extreme inbreeding,
in which progenies are produced by the fusion of
male and female gametes of the same chromosome.
Its inbreeding coefficient F has the following form [7]:
F ¼ ð1=2Þn1 ð1Þ
where n is the generation number of the self-fertiliza-
tion. The crossover operations between the same
chromosomes in Genetic Algorithm can be consid-
ered as the ‘self-fertilization’. Thus, the degree of sim-
ilarity between these chromosomes can be effectively
evaluated by the inbreeding coefficient F obtained
using Eq. (1).
974 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981
(2) Sibmating
The sibmating is another inbreeding manner including
full sibmating and half sibmating. The full sibmating is
the mating between the chromosomes with the same
parents and the half sibmating is the mating between
the chromosomes with one same parent. The defini-
tion method of the inbreeding coefficient for the two
matting methods complies with the same theory as
that of self-fertilization. For the full sibmating, the
inbreeding coefficient F can be defined as [7]
n1
F ¼ ð1=4Þ
where n is the generation number from the chromo-
somes to their common ancestor. For the half sibmat-
ing, the inbreeding coefficient F can be expressed as [7]
F ¼ ð1=8Þn1
The crossover operations between the different chro-
mosomes in Genetic Algorithm can be thought as the
‘sibmating’. Thus, the degree of similarity between
these chromosomes can be effectively evaluated by
the inbreeding coefficient F obtained using Eq. (2)
or (3).
(3) Others
On the other hand, for the chromosome after a muta-
tion operation, its inbreeding coefficient F can be
expressed as b which is a constant within the range:
0 < b < 1 and has the different value for the different
cases. Mutation operations can decrease the similar-
ity between chromosomes by changing the chromo-
some genes. Thus, b should be a larger value for
the single-point mutation and a smaller value for
multiple-point mutation.
3.1.2. Family tree
Family Tree has a tree structure which can record the
kinship between chromosomes and guide the calculation
of inbreeding coefficients Fs for them. Fig. 2 shows an
Initial 1.1 1.2 1.3
population
1st generation
2.1
2nd generation
3.1
3rd generation
4th generation
Fig. 2. Family tree of an evolution.
example of the family tree, in which dash lines represent
mutation operations, solid lines represent crossover opera-
tions, and the chromosome with a cross means that the
chromosome has been eliminated after a selection opera-
tion. In this example, the initial population has 12 chromo-
somes: 1.1–1.12. The first generation has 12 chromosomes:
1.1–1.5, 1.7–1.9, 1.11, 2.1–2.3. Chromosomes 2.1 is gener-
ated by a mutation operation, Chromosomes 2.2 and 2.3
are generated by a crossover operation, and Chromosomes
1.6, 1.10, and 1.12 have been eliminated after the selection.
Chromosomes 1.1 and 2.1 form a family, and Chromo-
ð2Þ somes 1.2, 2.2, and 2.3 form another family. Thus, the F
for Chromosomes 1.1 and 2.1 is equal to b (in the example,
it is equal to 1/5.), and the F for Chromosomes 1.2 and 2.2
and the F for Chromosomes 1.2 and 2.3 both are equal to
1/4 according to Eq. (2), as shown in Table 1. For the chro-
ð3Þ mosomes that are not within the same family, such as
Chromosomes 1.2 and 2.1, their F should be equal to zero
and cannot be calculated using Eq. (2) or (3). For the chro-
mosomes deleted in the evolutionary process, their kinship
with other chromosomes is inexistent and the correspond-
ing inbreeding coefficients Fs return to zero as well. In
the example, all the inbreeding coefficients between chro-
mosomes are calculated and shown in Table 1, in which
the chromosomes deleted in the evolutionary process are
represented by the bold digits.
3.1.3. The degree of homology
Based on the inbreeding coefficient F, the degree of
homology between the chromosomes, Gi, can be calculated
to represent the degree of similarity between chromosomes.
The calculation procedure goes through: (1) the degrees of
homology Gi for all the chromosomes are set to be 100,000
at first; (2) after the crossover and mutation operations, the
degrees of homology, Gi, for all the chromosomes are recal-
culated as
G0i ¼ Gi  F ð4Þ
1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12
2.2 2.3
3.2 3.3
4.3 4.1 4.2
5.3 5.1 5.2
 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981 975

Table 1
Values of inbreeding coefficients between chromosomes
1st generation CF 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12
2.1 1/5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.2 0 1/4 0 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.3 0 1/4 0 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0
2nd generation CF 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.11 2.1 2.2 2.3
3.1 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0
3.2 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0
3.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/5 0 0 0 0
3rd generation CF 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.5 1.8 1.9 1.11 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.2 3.3
4.1 1/5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/2 0 0 0 0 0
4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/2 0 0 0 0 0
4th generation CF 1.1 1.5 1.8 1.9 1.11 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3
5.1 0 1/5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5.2 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/4
5.3 0 0 1/4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1/4

and (3) output the values of the degrees of homology to cal-
culate the selection possibility for the crossover and muta-
tion operations. Then, genetic operations will be
considered preferentially for the chromosomes with the
low degrees of homology to ensure their low similarities.
Thus, Genetic Algorithm can be effective even when the
population size is small and the inbreeding among chromo-
somes can be reduced.
3.2. Improved Genetic Algorithm
With the help of the family tree, an improved Genetic
Algorithm can be developed in order to solve the material
selection problem for CMMMs. The developing procedure
is shown in Fig. 3 and the related explanation is introduced
as follows:
3.2.1. Determining encoding method
Since real numbers offer a higher precision with more
consistent results and represent the actual problem more
closely, they are applied to encode design variables in
this paper. If there are n regions in a component and
mi material choices for the ith region, the decision vari-
ables are encoded as a chromosome which has n bits
expressed by the real numbers and can be represented
as [1]

Selecting
optimization method

Determining
Encoding
encoding method

Determining
initial population

Determining Evaluating the degree

the method of of homology between
reproduction chromosomes

Determining the method Determining

of genetic operations chromosome fitness

Determining NO Determining stop

Selection selection method Terminate? criterion

YES

Constructing the component

End

Fig. 3. Developing procedure of an improved Genetic Algorithm.

976 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981

not work because of the discrete character of tournament

1  m1 1  m2 1  m3  1  mi  1  mn
selections; and (3) roulette wheel selections and their
extensions outperform tournament selections because
highly unfit chromosomes have barely a chance to be
QnThus, the total population (TP) can be calculated by
selected for reproduction in roulette wheel selections.
i¼1 mi and may be very large.
Furthermore, roulette wheel selections and their exten-
3.2.2. Determining initial population sions are the simplest selection method and can provide
The initial population IP can be expressed by a L · N a zero bias [12]. Therefore, roulette wheel selection and
matrix filled with random real numbers and has the form as its extensions are adopted as the selection method in this
2 3 paper.
a11 a12    a1N
6a 7
6 21 a22    a2N 7 3.2.6. Determining the method of genetic operations
6
IP ¼ 6 . .. .. 7 ð5Þ
7 The probability of crossover for the ith pair of chromo-
4 .. . . 5
somes is then calculated as
aL1 aL2  aLN
Gi
P ðiÞ
c ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð7Þ
where the element aij (1 6 i 6 L, 1 6 j 6 N) is a real num-
K þ G2i
ber and represents the bit of a chromosome; and N is the
number of the bits. where Gi is the degree of homology for the ith pair, and K is
a positive real number which is used to adjust the sensitiv-
3.2.3. Determining the degree of homology between ity of Gi with respect to the probability of crossover. In this
chromosomes paper, K is set to be 1,000,000. The probabilities obtained
As mentioned previously, genetic operations should be in Eq. (7) are normalized by
performed among the chromosomes with lower degrees
of homology. Therefore, the degrees of homology between  P ðiÞ
P ðiÞ
c ¼ PS c ðiÞ ð8Þ
chromosomes need to be calculated using the method i¼1 P c
introduced previously with the help of family tree.
The cumulative probability for the ith pair of chromo-
somes can be obtained by
3.2.4. Determining chromosome fitness
The fitness of every chromosome is measured by the X
i


evaluation function [1] qðiÞ

c ¼ P ðiÞ
c ð9Þ
i¼1

1 X mi
ðiÞ
Xn
a
fi ¼ K j þ k1 ½V j ðC j þ M j Þ þ P i
mi j¼1 j¼1
In Eq. (6), the first item is for evaluating the material affin-
ity of adjacent regions in the ith chromosome, where mi is
the number of boundaries of adjacent regions in the ith
ðiÞ
chromosome and K j is the material affinity value of the
jth boundary in the ith chromosome. Evaluation method
ðiÞ
of parameter K j has been described in Ref. [8]. The second
item is for evaluating the material cost and manufacturing
cost, where Cj is the price per unit volume of material in the
jth region and can be searched from the material database;
Vj is the volume of the jth region; Mj is the manufacturing
cost per unit volume for the jth region and can be searched
from the database about manufacturability; and n is the
number of material regions in the component. The coeffi-
cients k1 and a are used to adjust the weight of items.
The third item is for the penalty of not satisfying manufac-
turability constraints, where Pi is the penalty value of the
ith chromosome.
3.2.5. Determining selection method
Comparing current popular selection methods [9–11], it
can be concluded that (1) truncation selections lead to a
much higher loss of the diversity; (2) ranking selections
can work in an area where tournament selections do
The probability of mutation can be adjusted using follow-
ð6Þ
ing formula:
C i Gi
P ðiÞ
m ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð10Þ
2
K þ ðC i Gi Þ
where K is a positive real number and is used to adjust the
sensitivity of CiGi with respect to the probability of
mutation.
3.2.7. Determining the method of reproduction
After the genetic operations, offspring with 40% popula-
tion have been generated by crossover operations, and off-
spring with 10% population have also been obtained by
mutation operations. Therefore, the parent and the off-
spring have 150% population in total and form an enlarged
sampling space [13]. Then the elitist selection scheme is
used to ensure that at least one copy of the best chromo-
some in the population is always passed onto the next gen-
eration, since it can guarantee the convergence of Genetic
Algorithm. The other chromosomes are selected by a rou-
lette wheel selection scheme.
3.2.8. Determining stop criterion
This paper employs the termination strategy that if the
same solution is not changed for 20 times, Genetic Algo-
 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981 977

rithm stops running and the final solution can be output as tion function, cannot be fulfilled by it and special modules
the optimum solution. need to be developed.

4.1. Computation module of family tree

4. The development of computer software prototype
A module is developed to fulfill the algorithm of the
Although the development history of Genetic Algo-
family tree described previously. This module is composed
rithm is short, it has attracted the attentions of many
of four sub-modules which are the kin recording sub-mod-
researchers because of its advantages and has been well
ule, the inbreeding coefficient sub-module, the degree of
developed due to the contributions of many researchers.
homology sub-module, and the output sub-module. The
There are much commercial software which can perform
kin recording sub-module is adopted to record the kin
Genetic Algorithm with the high reliability and good sta-
among chromosomes. For example, as shown in Fig. 2,
bility. Among them, Genetic Algorithm for Optimization
Chromosomes 5.1 and 5.2 in the fourth generation are
Toolbox (GAOT) is free software developed by Houck
the offspring of Chromosomes 1.8 and 4.2 using a crossover
et al. [13,14] and simulates the evolutionary procedure in
operation. Thus, the record has the form as
the MATLAB environment using binary, real, and
ordered base encoding methods. Thus, its encoding meth-
ods are very suitable for the representation of material Chromo- Generation Parent Parent Generation Brothers/ Ancestor
properties of CMMMs. Its implementation of genetic some Number One Two Method sisters

operators, selection functions, termination functions, and 5.1 4 1.8 4.2 Crossover 5.2 1.11& 1.8
(Sibmating)
evaluation functions are achieved by several MATLAB
5.2 4 1.8 4.2 Crossover 5.1 1.11& 1.8
functions with the characteristics of the extensibility and (Sibmating)
modularity. GAOT has been tested on a series of non-lin-
ear, non-convex, multi-modal functions. The results of
these tests show that GAOT is capable of finding good For recording the ancestor, an algorithm is developed to
solutions for the implicit objective functions with discrete find the ancestor of chromosome, generation by genera-
variables and discontinuous and/or non-convex design tion, and record the related data. The algorithm is per-
spaces that are the main characters for the optimization formed following the procedure: (1) determining the
of material selection. Therefore, GAOT is selected as a generation number of objective chromosome; (2) determin-
toolbox for developing the computer software prototype ing the parents of objective chromosome; and (3) determin-
of this approach. The elements and the workflow of com- ing the ancestors of the objective chromosome. The
puter software prototype are shown in Fig. 4. But, GAOT searching procedure is repeated and stopped until ances-
is only the universal software, several special algorithms tors of the objective chromosome in the initial generation
needed in this approach, such as family tree and termina- are found. For example, chromosome 5.1, its parents are

Input the results of

Material database
material selection

Encoding module
Kin recording sub-module
Initial population
module Inbreeding coefficient sub-module

Degree of homology sub-module

Reproduction module
Output sub-module
Family Tree module

Genetic operation module Material affinity sub-module

Chromosome fitness sub-module

Chromosome fitness module
NO
Selection module Terminate? Terminate condition module
YES
Output optimization reuslts

End

Fig. 4. Elements and workflow of the computer software prototype.

978 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981
Chromosome 1.8 and Chromosome 4.2. Since Chromo-
some 1.8 belongs to the initial generation, search procedure
is focused on finding the ancestor of chromosome 4.2. The
search results show that the parent of Chromosome 4.2 is
Chromosome 1.11 which belongs to the initial generation
and thus the search iteration is stopped. Also, an index is
applied in this module for the convenience of finding the
related records of objective chromosome. Based on these
recorded data, the inbreeding coefficients of chromosomes
are calculated by the inbreeding coefficient sub-module as
mentioned previously. Then, the degrees of homology for
chromosomes are calculated by the degree of homology
sub-module.
4.2. Computation module of termination function
In this module, a matrix is adopted to record the opti-
mum solution in every generation. An algorithm is applied
to compare these solutions and record the repeated times of
the same optimum solution. When the same solution over-
lapped 20 times continuously, the improved Genetic Algo-
rithm is stopped by the module. The final solution is output
as the optimum solution.
4.3. Verification
After these modules were developed, Traveling Sales-
man Problem (TSP) [15] was applied to check its correct-
ness and efficiency, since it is an optimization problem
which is similar to the optimization of material selection
Table 2
Information of city location for TSP
City name City location (x, y) · 105 m
0 0.4, 0.4439
1 0.2439, 0.1463
2 0.1707, 0.2293
3 0.2293, 0.761
4 0.5171, 0.9414
5 0.8732, 0.6536
6 0.6878, 0.5219
7 0.8488, 0.3069
8 0.6683, 0.2536
9 0.6195, 0.2634
Table 3
Capability comparison between traditional Genetic Algorithm and improved Genetic Algorithm
Genetic Algorithm [15] Population size
Total length (·105 m)
Optimum route
The time number for which the total length is smaller than
4 · 105 m in 10 calculations
Improved Genetic Algorithm Population size
developed in this paper Total length
Optimum route
The time number for which the total length is smaller than
4 · 105 m in 10 calculations
with the similar characters of implicit functions, discrete
variables, discontinuous and/or non-convex design spaces.
The idea of TSP is to find a tour for a given number of cit-
ies, visiting each city once and returning to the starting city
where the length of this tour is minimized. For example, if
there are five cities named A, B, C, D, and E and the tour
sequence is C ! A ! E ! B ! D ! C, the total length d
can be expressed as
d ¼ d CA þ d AE þ d EB þ d BD þ d DC ð11Þ
The TSP is to find the tour among five cities that has the
minimum total length dmin. However, the TSP is a NP
(nondeterministic polynomial) complete problem which is
hard to find the global optimization solution in a limited
time number and a limited solution space [16]. Thus, the
common method to solve the TSP is to find the approxi-
mate solution after running the optimization for many
times, which is approaching to the global optimization
solution [17]. For a TSP, Genetic Algorithm is an effective
optimization method and optimization results or conver-
gence speeds have been extensively used as assessment
methods for evaluating different genetic operators. The
normal method is to perform the optimization for several
times to obtain the minimum [15]. If the smaller the solu-
tion is or the more the time number for obtaining the min-
imum is, the better the optimization method is. In this
paper, the TSP of ten cities is applied and the city locations
are randomly produced as described in Table 2. The opti-
mization time number is 10. Three population sizes, which
are 5, 10, and 30, are adopted in the improved Genetic
Algorithm to solve TSP, respectively, and their optimiza-
tion results are listed in Table 3. The optimization results
obtained by the normal GA in literature [15] are also listed
in Table 3. It can be seen from the results that when pop-
ulation size is five, the optimum route obtained by the
improved Genetic Algorithm is City2 ! City8 ! City7 !
City6 ! City9 ! City1 ! City3 ! City4 ! City5 !
City0 ! City2, the total length is 3.859839 · 105 m, and
the time number for which the total length is smaller than
4 · 105 m is one time within 10 optimizations. When
population size is thirty, the optimum route is City3 !
City2 ! City1 ! City0 ! City9 ! City8 ! City7 !
City6 ! City5 ! City4 ! City3, the total length is
2.797347 · 105 m, and the time number for which the total
5 10 30
/ 3.753875 2.998292
/ 32104589673 45768901234
/ 1 3
5 10 30
3.859839 3.628659 2.797347
28769134502 20134598762 32109876543
1 2 3
 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981
length is smaller than 4 · 105 m is 3 times within 10 calcu-
lations. It is obvious that the optimization results obtained
by the improved Genetic algorithm are better than those of
Ref. [15]. Besides, it can be found from the results that the
larger the size of population, the smaller the total length is.
A large population size is in favor of finding the global
optimum solution. However, what is more important is
that the power of the improved Genetic Algorithm devel-
oped in this paper is higher than that of Ref. [15]. For
the small population size of 5, the improved Genetic
Algorithm developed in this paper can also find the optimal
solution, while Ref. [15] cannot do. Since the materials
and/or microstructures satisfying the optimized properties
of some material regions are sometimes limited and thus
the population size of Genetic Algorithm may be
small, the improved Genetic Algorithm developed in this
paper is particularly suitable to the material selection of
CMMMs.
5. An example
To validate the approach and its software prototype, the
material selection for each material region of a special
cantilever beam shown in Fig. 5 is introduced in this
section. It has the length of 400 mm, the thickness of
100 mm, and the width of 100 mm. Two forces of
P = 5000 N are loaded on its free tip. The aim of optimiza-
tion is to minimize the displacement of free tip with the
constraint that the beam weight is less than 25 kg and the
material Young’s module and Poisson’s ratio range from
70 GPa to 500 GPa and from 0.2 to 0.35, respectively.
The optimization model is expressed as
Minimize d tip ðEI ; mI Þ
Subject to w 6 25 kg
70 Gpa 6 EI 6 500 GPa
0:200 6 mI 6 0:35 I ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n
5000N 5000N
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
100 400
Fig. 5. A cantilever beam.
Table 4
Optimization result of the required material properties in each region of the cantilever beam
Region number 1 2
Young’s modulus (GPa) 220 210.16
Poisson’s ratio 0.3226 0.3300
Density (kg/m3) 8910 7850
979
With the optimization model, the optimization result is
listed in Table 4. To simplify the material selection, four
types of materials with the most adaptive material proper-
ties are selected first for each material region and described
in Table 5, where N represents the region number, E dele-
gates Young’s modulus with the unit of GPa, m represents
Poisson’s ratio, q represents density with the unit of kg/
m3, M delegates material price with the unit of $/kg, and
symbol ‘–’ illustrates that the related material properties
have not been described in the material database due to
the absence of data. With these materials, the interface
stresses and the physical affinity for all material pairs are
then calculated and listed in Table 6 [18], in which material
pairs of adjacent material regions are described by the
numbers of material regions. For example, R12 represents
material pairs of Regions One and Two. With the informa-
tion, material selection of the cantilever beam can be per-
formed with the help of the improved Genetic Algorithm
developed in this paper. The fitness of chromosome can
be evaluated using Eq. (6). However, there is not sufficient
information about the manufacturing costs M of all mate-
rials and manufacturing constraints P in material database.
Therefore, the values for M and P are assumed to be zero
for this example and the fitness of each chromosome de-
scribed in Eq. (6) can be calculated as
1 X mi
ðiÞ
X n
a
fi ¼ Kj þ k  ðV j  C j Þ ð13Þ
mi j¼1 j¼1
where k and a are the coefficients used to adjust the weight
of items. Since the material affinities of adjacent regions are
important factors to be evaluated and the material costs of
different materials have been initially considered, k and a
have the values of 0.05 and 1, respectively.
The selection optimization with the initial population of
ð12Þ 50 and termination condition mentioned previously has
been performed 100 times, and the optimization result
obtained is shown in Table 7. The objective performances
of the cantilever beam composed of the selected materials
are then calculated to check whether the selection result
can satisfy the objective performance. The check result is
that the objective displacement is 1.2215 · 105 m and the
beam weight is 22.740 kg, which are a little larger than
100
the required optimization result obtained in Ref. [9] with
the error of 1.72% and 0.4%, respectively. Since the errors
are all very small, it can be verified that the improved
Genetic Algorithm developed in this paper is very effective
on selecting materials for CMMMs, when the population is
small.
3 4 5 6 7 8
189.49 167.96 145.59 122.69 100.69 84.73
0.3300 0.3300 0.2844 0.2774 0.2712 0.3275
7500 5430 4800 4510 3500 2700
 980
Table 5
Four types of materials for the required material properties in each region of the cantilever beam
N Optimized material Choice one Choice two Choice three Choice four
properties
E m q MN E m q M MN E m q M MN E m q M MN E m q M
1 220 0.3226 8910 Ni 210 0.31 8890 182 Co 248 0.32 8850 363 Stellite alloy 226 0.19 8520 209.9 Hayness 263 Alloy 221 – 8360 103.5
2 210.16 0.3300 7850 Stainless 200 0.30 7900 2.09 Steel 210 0.29 7900 0.86 Si3N4 325 0.24 3187 208.2 TiN 250 0.23 5430 487.3
steel
3 189.49 0.3300 7500 Iron 196 0.3 7400 0.54 Cr3C2 373 – 6700 376 Mo -SiO2 271 0.17 6920 398.8 Cr 248 0.21 7910 79.7
4 167.96 0.3300 5430 TiN 250 0.23 5430 487.3 Ti 115 0.33 4510 289 Iron 196 0.3 7400 0.54 Boron/epoxy 230 0.21 2000 1107
5 145.59 0.2844 4800 TiC 439 0.19 4920 183.9 BeI-70 304 – 1850 3349 TiN 250 0.23 5430 487.3 Ti 115 0.33 4510 289

X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981

6 122.69 0.2774 4510 Ti 115 0.33 4510 289 TiB2 367 0.28 4500 531.7 TiN 250 0.23 5430 487.3 Al 79 0.33 2700 1.695
7 100.69 0.2712 3500 Al 79 0.33 2700 1.695 BN 85.9 – 2270 228.6 Mullite 107 0.24 2270 66.4 Si 127 0.28 2330 184.2
8 84.73 0.3275 2700 Al 79 0.33 2700 1.695 BN 85.9 – 2270 228.6 Mullite 107 0.24 2270 66.4 Kevlar/epoxy 66 0.34 1800 51

Table 6
Physical affinities of different material pairs
Material pairs R12 1121 1122 1123 1124 1221 1222 1223 1224 1321 1322 1323 1324 1421 1422 1423 1424
Interface stress (MPa) 7 2 54 17 28 23 30 6 9 3 58 17 13 7 48 11
Physical affinity 0.97 0.99 0.01 0.18 0.87 0.91 0.05 0.55 0.94 0.98 0.01 0.18 0.94 0.97 0.01 0.33
Material pairs R23 2131 2132 2133 2134 2231 2232 2233 2234 2331 2332 2333 2334 2431 2432 2433 2434
Interface stress (MPa) 3 83 34 23 8 78 28 17 58 24 30 39 26 62 8 2
Physical affinity 0.98 0 0.03 0.10 0.95 0 0.06 0.85 0.01 0.09 0.05 0.02 0.07 0.01 0.45 0.82
Material pairs R34 3141 3142 3143 3144 3241 3242 3243 3244 3341 3342 3343 3344 3441 3442 3443 3444
Interface stress (MPa) 28 59 0 15 56 112 74 67 8 87 34 21 2 79 24 11
Physical affinity 0.06 0.69 1 0.91 0.70 0 0 0.52 0.45 0 0.03 0.12 0.82 0 0.09 0.33
Material pairs R45 4151 4152 4153 4154 4251 4252 4253 4254 4351 4352 4353 4354 4451 4452 4453 4454
Interface stress (MPa) 81 33 0 80 162 122 96 0 104 58 28 59 97 46 13 72
Physical affinity 0 0.04 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0.01 0.06 0.69 0 0.01 0.27 0.75
Material pairs R56 5161 5162 5163 5164 5261 5262 5263 5264 5361 5362 5363 5364 5461 5462 5463 5464
Interface stress (MPa) 162 18 81 141 98 23 31 123 96 56 0 110 0 144 96 43
Physical affinity 0 0.17 0 0 0 0.1 0.05 0 0 0.01 1 0 1 0 0 0.71
Material pairs R67 6171 6172 6173 6174 6271 6272 6273 6274 6371 6372 6373 6374 6471 6472 6473 6474
Interface stress (MPa) 43 38 16 8 133 134 132 123 110 110 100 78 0 8 33 58
Physical affinity 0.71 0.02 0.20 0.45 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0.45 0.04 0.01
Material pairs R78 7181 7182 7183 7184 7281 7282 7283 7284 7381 7382 7383 7384 7481 7482 7483 7484
Interface stress (MPa) 0 8 33 20 8 0 25 28 33 25 0 50 52 43 26 69
Physical affinity 1 0.45 0.04 0.85 0.45 1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.08 1 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.07 0.01
 X.-J. Zhang et al. / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 972–981 981

Table 7
Optimum materials for each material region of the cantilever beam
Region Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Material Name Hayness 263 Alloy Steel Iron Iron Ti Ti Al Al
Young’s Modulus (GPa) 221 210 196 196 115 115 79 79
Poisson’s Ratio – 0.29 0.3 0.3 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33
Density (kg/m3) 8360 7900 7400 7400 4510 4510 2700 2700
Material Cost ($/kg) 103.5 0.86 0.54 0.54 289 289 1.695 1.695

6. Conclusions [3] Eiben AE, Schoenauer M. Evolutionary computing. Inform Process

Since some of objective functions and constraints for
material selection optimization problems of CMMMs can
only be expressed in the form of implicit functions with dis-
crete variables and discontinuous and/or non-convex
design spaces, Genetic Algorithm has to be used to find
the global optimum solutions with high probability for such
optimization problems. But, the population size is usually
small for such optimization problems. Thus, the chromo-
some inbreeding is easy to take place and the global opti-
mum solution is hard to find. To raise its efficiency,
genetic operations should be performed among the chromo-
somes with lower degrees of similarity. According to the
genetics principles, the degree of similarity between chro-
mosomes is closely related to their kinship. Therefore, an
improved Genetic Algorithm and its corresponding com-
puter software prototype were developed based on ‘‘family
tree’’ in this paper, and have been verified in practical mate-
rial selections for the material design of CMMMs.
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was supported by a
Grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No.
HKU 7062/00E). The financial contribution is gratefully
acknowledged.
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