Electrode-spacer contour optimization by ANN aided genetic algorithm

Optimization of contours of three dimensional electrode-spacer arrangements used in gas insulated systems (GIS) has been carried out by ANN aided genetic algorithm (GA) to obtain desirable electric stress distribution along the insulator surface. Two cases have been studied and reported in detail. Multilayer feed-forward neural networks with error back-propagation algorithm have been applied to accelerate the execution of GA loop. The training and the test data have been prepared by means of electric field calculations using indirect boundary element method (BEM). The results show that optimized contours have been obtained with acceptable degree of accuracy with the help of GA aided by trained ANN.