Pipe smoothing genetic algorithm for least cost water distribution network design

This paper describes the development of a Pipe Smoothing Genetic Algorithm (PSGA) and its application to the problem of least cost water distribution network design. Genetic algorithms have been used widely for the optimisation of both theoretical and real-world non-linear optimisation problems, including water system design and maintenance problems. In this work we propose a pipe smoothing based approach to the creation and mutation of chromosomes which utilises engineering expertise with the view to increasing the performance of the algorithm compared to a standard genetic algorithm. Both PSGA and the standard genetic algorithm were tested on benchmark water distribution networks from the literature. In all cases PSGA achieves higher optimality in fewer solution evaluations than the standard genetic algorithm.