Thomas Bihrer, "Direct Manipulation of Free-Form Deformation in Evolutionary Optimisation", 2006.

The choice of an adequate representation is an important part of every evolutionary design optimisation. A exible representation which allows a huge number of design variation while getting along with a few parameters is preferable. In the past the Free-From Deformation method was successfully applied for design optimisation. In this diploma thesis an adaptive Free-Form Deformation is combined with an Evolution Strategy. The aim is to automatically create a representation which is adapted to the problem and reduce the dependence on the initial representation build by a designer. Furthermore it should be analysed if such an adaptation can lead to a faster convergence. In a second part a direct manipulation technique is presented to increase the inuence of the object parameter on the design in order to speed up the optimisation. Both representations are tested at target matching problems. If the optimisation is applied to a uid dynamics optimisation problem, a computational grid is required to evaluate the designs. Since the Free-From Deformation represents deformations of an initial design, it can also be applied to a grid. Thus a costly re-meshing procedure can be omitted. To keep the structural composition of the mesh the deformations have to be restricted. The inuence of these additional constraints is also analysed.