The optimal design of dome structures is a challenging task and therefore the computational performance of the currently available techniques needs improvement. This paper presents a combined algorithm, that is supported by the mixture of Charged System Search (CSS) and Teaching-Learning-based optimization (TLBO). Since the CSS algorithm features a strong exploration and may explore all unknown locations within the search space, it is an appropriate complement to enhance the optimization process by solving the weaknesses with using another optimization algorithm’s strong points. To enhance the exploitation ability of this algorithm, by adding two parts of Teachers phase and Student phase of TLBO algorithm to CSS, a method is obtained that is more efficient and faster than standard versions of these algorithms. In this paper, standard optimization methods and new hybrid method are tested on three kinds of dome structures, and the results show that the new algorithm is more efficient in comparison to their standard versions.

Keywords: dome structures, charged system search, optimum design, teaching-learning-based optimization, structural optimization.

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