A general-purpose optimization program for engineering design

A new general-purpose optimization program for engineering design is described. ADS (Automated Design Synthesis) is a FORTRAN program for nonlinear constrained (or unconstrained) function minimization. The optimization process is segmented into three levels: Strategy, Optimizer, and One-dimensional search. At each level, several options are available so that a total of nearly 100 possible combinations can be created. An example of available combinations is the Augmented Lagrange Multiplier method, using the BFGS variable metric unconstrained minimization together with polynomial interpolation for the one-dimensional search.