ABSTRACT
Optimization is the act of obtaining the “best” result under given circumstances. In design, construction, and maintenance of any engineering system, engineers have to take many technological and managerial decisions at several stages. The ultimate goal of all such decisions is to minimize either the effort or cost required and maximize benefits. Since the effort required and the benefits desired in any practical situation are expressed as a function of certain decision variables, optimization can be defined as the process of finding the conditions that give the maximum or the minimum value of the function. As seen in Figure 1.1, the point x corresponds to the maximum value of f(x). There is no single method available for solving all optimization problems efficiently. Hence, a number of optimization methods have been developed for solving different types of optimization problems.
