Application of the Distributed Genetic Algorithm for In-Core Fuel Optimization Problems under Parallel Computational Environment

The distributed genetic algorithm (DGA) is applied for loading pattern optimization problems of the pressurized water reactors. A basic concept of DGA follows that of the conventional genetic algorithm (GA). However, DGA equally distributes candidates of solutions (i.e. loading patterns) to several independent “islands” and evolves them in each island. Communications between islands, i.e. migrations of some candidates between islands are performed with a certain period. Since candidates of solutions independently evolve in each island while accepting different genes of migrants, premature convergence in the conventional GA can be prevented. Because many candidate loading patterns should be evaluated in GA or DGA, the parallelization is efficient to reduce turn around time. Parallel efficiency of DGA was measured using our optimization code and good efficiency was attained even in a heterogeneous cluster environment due to dynamic distribution of the calculation load. The optimization code is based on the client/server architecture with the TCP/IP native socket and a client (optimization) module and calculation server modules communicate the objects of loading patterns each other. Throughout the sensitivity study on optimization parameters of DGA, a suitable set of the parameters for a test problem was identified. Finally, optimization capability of DGA and the conventional GA was compared in the test problem and DGA provided better optimization results than the conventional GA.