Inverse Modeling: Theory and Engineering Examples

Over the last two decades inverse problems have become increasingly popular due to their widespread applications. This popularity continuously demands designers to find alternative methods, to solve the inverse problems, which are efficient and accurate. It is important to use effective techniques that are both accurate and computationally efficient. This paper presents a method for solving inverse problems through Artificial Neural Network (ANN) theory. The paper also presents a method to apply Grey Wolf optimizer (GWO) algorithm to inverse problems. GWO is a recent optimization method producing superior results. Both methods are then compared to traditional methods such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Four typical engineering design problems are used to compare the four methods. The results show that the GWO outperforms other methods both in terms of efficiency and accuracy. The error is comparable among the ANN and PSO methods, while the latter has better computational efficiency.