| Abstrakt: |
In the new education and technology era, there are many challenges for engineering education. New engineer curricula are aimed at empowering engineers to manage solving their problems using interdisciplinary approaches. Optimization is one of them and is regarded as the tendency to search for the best solution under specified constraints. In this method, modeling and simulation are two inseparable components. In mathematics, such optimization is concerned with finding inputs of a function either minimize or maximize its value, which itself may be subjected to constraints. Computational optimization can be defined as the process of designing, implementing and testing algorithms for solving a variety of optimization problems and includes the disciplines of mathematics to formulate the model, operations research to model the system, computer science for algorithmic design and analysis, and software engineering to implement the model. There is no doubt that all these procedures are aimed at solving engineering problems primarily. Nowadays researchers can solve real-life problems that, in the past were considered to be unsolvable, with the help of new technological developments in algorithms and computer hardware. In the present study, effort is made to demonstrate the significance of optimization by a case study related with alternating activated sludge systems. A dynamic constrained optimization problem is solved in order to find the optimum aeration profile applicable to such systems. It can be said that the required standards for nitrogen removal in waste water treatment systems can be achieved by means of applying an aeration profile and the best way to determine this profile isthe solution of an optimization problem. This paper presents the use of an optimization algorithm in solving an engineering problem, which cannot otherwise be comprehended or tackled by any other means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
