
158 Decision Based Design
travel. Sometimes constraints are implemented as soft heuristics by using a
penalty for violating them. Any number of heuristics can be implemented in
the working of the method.
5.3.4.4 Simulated Annealing
Kirkpatrick, Gelatt, and Vecchi (1983) discuss the strategy mimicking the
metallurgical process of annealing in nding a solution to an optimization
problem. In annealing, a substance is cooled at a controlled rate that helps
in inducing properties such as long-range order, ductility, and malleability.
As with the heuristics discussed so far, in simulated annealing, solutions
are randomly generated at rst. Based on ...