A practical quantum algorithm for solving structural optimization problems

a proof-of-concept!

Master thesis (2021)

Authors

J.M. de Zoete Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

B. Y. Chen Aerospace Structures & Computational Mechanics - Aerospace Engineering (mentor)
M. Möller Numerical Analysis - EEMCS (mentor)
M.I. Gerritsma Aerodynamics - Aerospace Engineering (graduation committee member)
S. van der Zwaag Novel Aerospace Materials - Aerospace Engineering (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering, Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2021 J de Zoete
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

10-09-2021

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

The aerospace engineering industry is continuously striving for faster methods to solve and optimize engineering and research problems with a higher degree of accuracy. It is therefore relevant to investigate possibilities that are expected to accelerate computational speed, such as quantum computing. For this reason, the objective of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of optimizing 2D determinate truss structures with a quantum algorithm run on a Gate-Based Quantum Computer (GBQC). The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is currently expected to be the most suitable quantum algorithm candidate for optimization problems, because of its simplicity and robustness. The most important take-away from this thesis is that it is possible to map a truss structure to QAOA format to optimize it on a GBQC. The program proves to be working on quantum virtual machines. However, it is currently not possible to obtain correct results when running on real quantum hardware due to noise.