Variational methods and structural optimization

Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India
Optimization hinders evolution!
ME256 Variational Methods and Structural Optimization Jan.-May. 2019
Instructor: G. K. Ananthasuresh , Room 106, ME Building, suresh at iisc.ac.in
Lectures: Tu, Th: 08:30 AM - 10:00 AM; Venue: ME Lecture Hall

There is a wealth of information out there...
Suggestions for additions are welcome.

Journals
You can learn about the application of optimization to the design problems by reading articles from the following journals.

Journal of Mechanical Design
Engineering Optimization
Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization
Journal of Computational Optimization and Applications
Research in Engineering Design
Journal of Mechanics of Machines and Structures
Finite Elements in Analysis and Design

Web sites on optimization in general

Check this out; it is a very useful reference to have at your finger tips -- quite literally with the mouse and keynboard interface. Mathematical Programming Glossary
Multidisciplinary Optimization Branch at NSA Langley Research Center.
A general resource to mathematical software.
Use the search engine at this site to look for software on optimization.
Vanderplaats Research and Development
We have the DOC/DOT software developed by this company. You might it useful in your project work. Note that this software is written in FORTRAN.
Professor Tom Cavalier's (Penn State) Optimization Links.
External Sources of Numerical Optimization Information.
Optimization Technology Center run by North Western University and Argonne National Labs.
NEOS (Network Enabled Optimization System Guide.
Quint Inc. that markets topology optimization software.
An interesting math history site with a lot of useful information is here.
Numerical recipes are here!.
MSC Software's optimization site is here .
Altair Engineering's site. Look at HyperShape/Pro.

Some university sites

Professor Papalambros' research group at the University of Michigan.
Professor Azarm's site at University of Maryland.
Stanford University's optimization group
Professor Mary Frecker's site at Penn State.
TOPOPT Professor Ole Sigmund's page at Technical University of Denmark.
Professor Nick Sahinidis' research group at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Historic tidbits

Who is Karush?
William Karush had derived the necessary conditions for constrained minimization in many variables in his masters thesis in 1939 in University of Chicago. This work was never published anywhere other than as a masters thesis. Fritz John also derived the same independently in 1948. That work rejected for a journal and appeard elsewhere. Works of Karush and John didn't attract the attention but that of Harold Kuhn and Alan Tucker at Princeton in 1951 did. Kuhn and Tucker also had dervived this independently but gave due credit to Karush. So, the conditions are now known to be Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions or KKT conditions.

Here is an obituary for Karush published in the University of Chicago magazine in October 1997.
William Karush, SB'38, SM'39, PhD'42, a research scientist and a professor emeritus of mathematics at California State University, Northridge, died February 22 in Los Angeles. He was 79. Karush was one of 37 Manhattan Project scientists to sign a 1945 petition urging the American government to restrain its use of nuclear weaponry, and he traveled internationally during the cold war as an activist for peaceful resolution to global conflict. Karush worked as a research scientist for Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. (now TRW) before becoming principal scientist at System Development Corp. in Santa Monica, CA, where he later headed system-sciences research. He wrote Webster's New World Dictionary of Mathematics. Survivors include his companion, Hope Wallace; a son; a daughter; a brother; a sister; and three grandchildren.