Gravitational Search Algorithm

Abhishek Kumar

2018H1430031H
INTRODUCTION
INSPIRATION
A nature-inspired, specifically
gravity-inspired population-
based algorithm
Based on Newton’s Law of
Gravity and mass interactions
 The
solutions in Exploration
the GSA The - All objects
The solution
population performance move Exploitation
with the
are called of each agent Each agent is towards - The agent
heavier mass
agents, these in the considered other objects with a heavy
represents
agents population is as object with heavier mass moves
the best
interact with measured by mass due to slowly
solution
each other its mass. the gravity
through the force.
gravity force.
NEWTON’S 2nd LAW
When a force F is applied to an object of mass M, the object moves with
acceleration a depending on the applied force and the object mass M.
ACCELERATION OF AGENTS
There are three kind of masses
Active gravitational mass Ma
Passive gravitational mass Mp
Inertial mass Mi.
The gravitational force Fij that acts on mass i by mass j is defined by:

Where Maj, Mpi are the active and passive masses of objects j, i,
respectively.
The acceleration of object (agent) i is computed as –

Where Mii is inertia mass of agent i

GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT G
The gravitational constant G at iteration t is computed as follows.

Where
Go and 𝛼 are initialized in the beginning of the search, and their
values will be reduced during the search.
T = tmax = is the total number of iterations.
𝛼 = Damping factor
STEPS IN GSA
Step 1. Initializing the values of gravitational constant Go, 𝛼, 𝜀 and the
iteration counter t.
Step 2. The initial population is generated randomly and consists of N
agents, the position of each agent is defined by:

Step 3. All agents in the population are evaluated and the best, worst
agents are assigned.
Step 4. The gravitational constant is updated as above
Step 5. When agent j acts on agent i with force, at a specific time (t) the
force is calculated as following:

Maj is the active gravitational mass of agent j, Mpi is

the passive gravitational mass of agent i
G(t) is gravitational constant at time t
Step 6. At iteration t, calculate the total force acting on agent i as
following:

Kbest is the set of first K agents with the best fitness value and biggest
mass, initialized to Ko at the beginning and reduced with time
Step 7. Calculate the inertial mass as following:

where represent the fitness value of the agent i at time t, and,

worst(t) and best(t) are -
(a) Maximization problem (b) Minimization problem
Step 8. The acceleration of agent i is calculated as following –

Step 9. During the search, the agents update their velocities and positions as
follows –

rand(i) = a uniform random variable in the interval [0, 1]

Step 10. The iteration counter is increased until
termination criteria satisfied
Step 11. The best optimal solution is produced.
Gravitational Search Algorithm for
Optimization Of Retaining Structures
RC CANTILEVER
RETAINING WALL
β = backfill slope angle
D = depth of soil in front
of the wall
B = base width of the
wall’s foundation
H = height of stem
q = surcharge load
DESIGN VARIABLES
• X1 = width of heel
• X2 = stem thickness at the top
• X3 = stem thickness at the bottom
• X4 = width of toe
• X5 = thickness of base slab
• X6 = vertical steel area of the stem per unit length of wall
• X7 = horizontal steel area of the toe per unit length of wall
• X8 = horizontal steel area of the heel per unit length of wall
OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
Minimize :
Where,
Cc, Ce, Cb, Cf and Cs are the unit price of concrete, excavation,
backfill, formwork, and reinforcement respectively.
 Vc ,Ve and Vb denote the volume of concrete, excavation and
backfill,
 Af shows the area of formwork and Ws indicates the weight of steel.
In this paper, unit price for above items were taken according to the
table below –
DESIGN CONSTRAINTS
Classified as geotechnical and structural requirements, according to
Bowles (1982) and ACI 318-05 (2005)
Represent the failure modes as a function of the design variables
1) Overturning failure mode

> 1.5
2) Sliding failure mode

> 1.5
3) Bearing failure mode

>3

4) Eccentricity failure mode (Middle third rule)

5) Toe shear and moment failure mode

>1 & >1

6) Heel shear and moment failure mode

>1 & >1

7) Stem shear and moment failure mode

>1 & >1

8) Maximum deflection at the top of the stem

9) The lower and upper bounds of the design variables.

PENALTY FUNCTION
Adds a penalty to the objective function to decrease the quality of
infeasible solutions.
If the objective function in above case is defined as –

where f (X ) is the objective function gi (X ), hj (X ) are

inequality and equality constraints respectively and Lk, Uk
are lower and upper bound constraints.
Then the penalty function is given by –
EXAMPLE 1 (3.5 m height)
Following GSA parameters were fixed – population size (N) = 50;
maximum iteration number(t max) = 1000; Go = 100; β = 20.
Results compared with PSO and GA
The value for G(t) was taken as –

Minimum price of retaining structure obtained by GSA lower than

those calculated by PSO and GA.
Results of PSO and GA improved by GSA by more than 6 and 11
percent, respectively
EXAMPLE 2 (5 m height)
QUESTIONS
1. Which parameters control performance of GSA ?
2. What concepts/laws is GSA based on ?
3. Difference between exploration/diversification and
exploitation/intensification ?
4. What types of masses are involved in GSA ?
5. Parts of a cantilever retaining wall and their modes of action under
earth pressure ?
ANSWERS
1. Maximum no. of iterations (tmax), population size (N), initial value
of gravitational constant (Go) , beta
2. Newton’s Law of Gravity and Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion
3. Exploration operators of the algorithm generate diverse solutions in
the search space. The exploitation operators help to attain more
precise solution. Therefore, by using a decreasing function for G(t),
algorithm starts with the situation of a high exploration ability and
tends towards exploitation around the found promising solutions.
4. Active gravitational mass, passive gravitational mass, inertial mass
5. Stem – vertical cantilever; Toe and heel slabs – horizontal
cantilevers
REFERENCES
1) Rashedi, E., Nezamabadi-pour, H., Saryazdi, S.,(2009), GSA: A
Gravitational Search Algorithm, Information Sciences 179 (2009)
2232–2248, Elsevier
2) Rashedi, E., Nezamabadi-pour, H.,et.al. (2018), A comprehensive
survey on gravitational search algorithm, Swarm and Evolutionary
Computation 41 (2018) 141–158, Elsevier
3) Khajehzadeh, M., Eslami ,M.,(2012), Gravitational search algorithm
for optimization of retaining structures, Indian Journal of Science and
Technology, Vol. 5 No. 1, ISSN: 0974- 6846