Review of Introduction to Optimum Design, 2nd Ed. by Jasbir Arora: Elsevier Academic Press, New York; 2004; 728 pages.

Arora’s introduction of a much-anticipated second edition of Introduction to Optimum Design will not only satisfy established users of his well-received first edition, but moreover, significant updates, supplementary material, and fine-tuning of the pedagogical aspects of the presentation will certainly broaden its appeal.

For those unfamiliar with the book, Introduction to Optimum Design is one of a number of contemporary works that provide a basic to intermediate introduction to the theory of optimal design with engineering applications. However, among some of the distinguishing characteristics of Arora’s book are its adaptability to audiences with diverse backgrounds, as well as the extent to which it makes the topic clear and approachable. The minimum mathematics prerequisites would include multivariate calculus and some exposure to linear algebra; as such, the book can readily be used with third-year or fourth-year undergraduates in most engineering disciplines. On the other hand, selected topics are treated with sufficient depth and rigor that, when covered at a faster pace, the book is equally well-suited for use at the introductory graduate level. The book would also be excellent as a self-study reference for the practicing engineer. Although perhaps the majority of the applications used in the book are drawn from problems in the civil and mechanical engineering disciplines (including a good sampling of structural optimization examples), most examples are framed in such a way that the key concepts can be understood by students from other engineering disciplines. As such, in this reviewer’s personal experience, students from chemical, electrical, and industrial engineering have found the book equally useful. In fact, students from industrial engineering often find the presentation of key mathematical concepts much clearer than what is customarily given in most operations research and quantitative analysis texts.

The layout of the first 12 chapters of the second edition consists of: “Introduction to Design,” “Optimum Design Problem Formulation,” “Graphical Optimization,” “Optimum Design Concepts,” “Linear Programming Methods for Optimum Design,” “Numerical Methods for Unconstrained Optimum Design,” “Numerical Methods for Constrained Optimum Design,” and “Introduction to Optimum Design with MATLAB.” Following the basic introduction and description of nomenclature in Chapters 1 and 2, many of the key concepts are introduced for two-variable optimum design problems in Chapter 3 (“Graphical Optimization”), which is now an expanded, separate chapter in the revised edition. Improvements in this chapter include examples involving the use of Mathematica and MATLAB for generating graphical solutions. In Chapters 4–11, the basic theoretical and computational aspects of optimization are given in a fashion similar to that of the first edition; however, the key concepts of existence and uniqueness of unconstrained and constrained solutions (now Chapters 4 and 5), numerical methods for linear programming (now Chapters 6 and 7), as well as the chapters on numerical methods for unconstrained and constrained nonlinear programming (now Chapters 8 and 9, 10 and 11, respectively), have each been broken into two chapters in order to improve the presentation. The latter six of these chapters, which now in the second edition cover numerical methods, include a liberal number of examples using both MATLAB and Microsoft Excel. Chapter 12, also new to the second edition, provides a more in-depth discussion of problem solving using MATLAB and its associated optimization toolbox. These updates make the second edition fully consistent with contemporary software.

Remaining chapters include newly added material on important, contemporary topics including “Discrete Variable Optimum Design Concepts” (Chapter 15), “Genetic Algorithms for Optimum Design” (Chapter 16), “Multiobjective Optimum Design Concepts and Methods” (Chapter 17), and “Global Optimization Concepts and Methods” (Chapter 18). These latter chapters provide a comprehensive, advanced introduction to emerging optimization techniques for complex and∕or large-scale problems; as such, the second edition will be a valuable reference, both for practitioners as well as for beginning researchers.

In summary, when considering the pedagogical refinements of the book, the expanded and updated software examples, as well as the extended survey of emerging computational methods, Arora’s Introduction to Optimum Design, 2nd Ed., furthers its goal of describing engineering design optimization in a rigorous yet simplified manner which is both highly accessible to and useful for a wide audience.