ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the basic concepts and methods used in multicriterion structural optimization. Also a brief literature review is given to describe the present research in the field. Special attention has been paid to those fundamental matters which are common to most of the published applications. These general ideas have been illustrated by some example problems where the emphasis is rather on the multicriterion view than on the numerical solution techniques. Specifically, the multicriterion problem formulation and the generation of Pareto optima are considered in these examples. The decision making process for finding the best Pareto optimal design is also briefly discussed. On the whole, this chapter should both clarify the logical structure of the multicriterion approach and describe its diverse possibilities as well as recent advances in the field.
