A preliminary study to metaheuristic approach in multilayer radiation shielding optimization

Metaheuristics are high-level algorithmic concepts that can be used to develop heuristic optimization algorithms. One of their applications is to find optimal or near optimal solutions to combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) such as scheduling, vehicle routing, and timetabling. Combinatorial optimization deals with finding optimal combinations or permutations in a given set of problem components when exhaustive search is not feasible. A radiation shield made of several layers of different materials can be regarded as a COP. The time taken to optimize the shield may be too high when several parameters are involved such as the number of materials, the thickness of layers, and the arrangement of materials. Metaheuristics can be applied to reduce the optimization time, trading guaranteed optimal solutions for near-optimal solutions in comparably short amount of time. The application of metaheuristics for radiation shield optimization is lacking. In this paper, we present a review on the suitability of using metaheuristics in multilayer shielding design, specifically the genetic algorithm and ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO). We would also like to propose an optimization model based on the ACO method.