Sharif Digital Repository

This paper applies different approaches to solve network reconfiguration and capacitor placement/setting problem. First, reconfiguration and capacitor placement is solved for power loss minimization. Second, medium and long-term planning perspective is considered for the problem which takes into account reliability cost in addition to energy losses cost. A heuristic algorithm is used in this study for reliability evaluation considering protection schemes and isolation points in the distribution network. The problems are solved by Harmony Search Algorithm, and it is shown that its performance is much more satisfactory than several other metaheuristic algorithms to solve reconfiguration and... 

This study presents a hybrid harmony search algorithm (HHSA) to solve engineering optimization problems with continuous design variables. Although the harmony search algorithm (HSA) has proven its ability of finding near global regions within a reasonable time, it is comparatively inefficient in performing local search. In this study sequential quadratic programming (SQP) is employed to speed up local search and improve precision of the HSA solutions. Moreover, an empirical study is performed in order to determine the impact of various parameters of the HSA on convergence behavior. Various benchmark engineering optimization problems are used to illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of... 

Demand response (DR) and flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices can be effectively used for congestion management in power transmission systems. However, demand response program (DRP) implementation can itself affect the optimum location of FACTS devices, which is one of the main issues in power system planning. This paper investigates the impact of DRPs on unified power flow controller (UPFC) placement. The harmony search algorithm is employed to determine the optimum locations and parameter setting of UPFC in a long-term framework. The optimization problem is solved with different objectives including generation and congestion cost reduction, as well as loss reduction. In this... 

An economic order quantity (EOQ) model with payment in advance is developed to purchase highprice raw materials. A joint policy of replenishments and pre-payments is employed to supply the materials. The rate of demand and lead time are taken to be constant and it is assumed that shortage does not occur in the cycles. The cycle is divided into three parts; the first part is the time between the earlier replenishment-time to the next order-time (to), the second part is the period between to to a payment-time (tk) and the third part is the period between tk to the next replenishment-time. At the start of the second part (to), α% of the purchasing cost is paid. The (1-α)% remaining purchasing... 

This paper develops an Improved harmony search (IHS) algorithm for solving optimization problems. IHS employs a novel method for generating new solution vectors that enhances accuracy and convergence rate of harmony search (HS) algorithm. In this paper the impacts of constant parameters on harmony search algorithm are discussed and a strategy for tuning these parameters is presented. The IHS algorithm has been successfully applied to various benchmarking and standard engineering optimization problems. Numerical results reveal that the proposed algorithm can find better solutions when compared to HS and other heuristic or deterministic methods and is a powerful search algorithm for various... 

A novel bi-objective multi-server location-allocation (LA) model is developed in this paper, in which the facilities are modeled as an M/M/m queuing system. Further, capacity and budget limitations are provided to make the LA problem more realistic. The two objective functions include (1) minimizing aggregate waiting times and (2) minimizing the maximum idle time of all facilities. Since the proposed model is NP-hard, a meta-heuristic algorithm called multi-objective harmony search algorithm (MOHA) is developed to solve it. In this algorithm, a new presentation scheme that satisfies most of the model constraints is proposed. Since there is no benchmark available in the literature to validate... 

In this paper, a multiproduct inventory control problem is considered in which the periods between two replenishments of the products are assumed independent random variables, and increasing and decreasing functions are assumed to model the dynamic demands of each product. Furthermore, the quantities of the orders are assumed integer-type, space and budget are constraints, the service-level is a chance-constraint, and that the partial back-ordering policy is taken into account for the shortages. The costs of the problem are holding, purchasing, and shortage. We show the model of this problem is an integer nonlinear programming type and to solve it, a harmony search approach is used. At the... 

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the widely used multiplexing techniques in wireless communications and especially cognitive radio networks. One of the key challenges of this technique is its high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal. This paper, introduces a new approach to PAPR reduction of OFDM signals using harmony search algorithm (HSA) based on the partial transmit sequence (PTS) method. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has better PAPR reduction performance as an accurate and low complexity approach for OFDM systems  

In distribution systems, feeder reconfiguration (FR) can lead to loss reduction, reliability improvement and some other economic savings. These advantages can be intensified by proper control and switching of Capacitor Banks (CBs). In this paper, using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) technique, a novel method is proposed for simultaneous dynamic scheduling of FR and CB switching in the presence of DG units having uncertain and variant generations over time. This method is applicable to both smart and classic distribution systems. While for the latter, state estimation method should be used to estimate the loads at different buses by employing a limited number of measurements. The objective of... 

In this paper, a multi-buyer multi-vendor supply chain problem is considered in which there are several products, each buyer has limited capacity to purchase products, and each vendor has warehouse limitation to store products. In this chain, the demand of each product is stochastic and follows a uniform distribution. The lead-time of receiving products from a vendor to a buyer is assumed to vary linearly with respect to the order quantity of the buyer and the production rate of the vendor. For each product, a fraction of the shortage is backordered and the rest are lost. The ordered product quantities are placed in multiple of pre-defined packets and there are service rate constraints for...