Posted by James Barton (195.92.168.171) on May 08, 2002 at 12:52:22:
In Reply to: computer aided design posted by James Barton on May 04, 2002 at 11:34:07:
Scot your project sounds exciting and you seem well placed to implement it. I would appreciate being kept upto date on your progress by email.
Would it be possible to create a program which evolves a wheel via "natural selection"? The user would create the rough design of their wheel and input it.
The program would show its exact level of efficiency and then copy the wheel. The copy would be randomly or selectively changed (ie the value of a variable)and the performance of the two wheels would be compared.
Which ever of the 2 wheels was the most efficient would be copied(the less efficient wheel would be discarded or stored for reference). The copy of the superior design would again be subject to another minor mutation....and so on until the original design was fully optimised.
A computer could get through countless wheels in a very short time.
Apart from random mutations it would be good if the user could pick a particular variable (or ratio)such as density of a particular weight and increment it up or down to the chosen limit: then display the results of the 100 or so wheels created in graph form.
This would not only show the optimum value of the variable for that particular design but perhaps more importantly give the wheel designer insight into the principles involved.