Near-optimal Placement of Piles in Grillage Type Foundations Based on Simulated Annealing

A problem of optimal positioning of piles in grillage type foundations is studied. A Global Optimization model reported in the literature is used to formalize this problem. A novel Simulated Annealing algorithm is developed to handle the Global Optimization problem. The algorithm employs six different optimization strategies. Computer experiments demonstrated that the proposed algorithm provides solutions with values, which are 5.8 % better than the solutions delivered by the existing state-of-the-art Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing algorithm.