TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– Cycle bases of graphs have many applications in science and engineering. For an efficient force method of structural analysis, a special cycle basis corresponding to sparse cycle adjacency matrix is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop an ant colony system (ACS) algorithm for the generation of a cycle basis, leading to suboptimal cycle bases.Design/methodology/approach– In this paper, an ACS algorithm is developed for the generation of a cycle basis, leading to suboptimal cycle basis corresponding to highly sparse flexibility matrices. Examples are included to illustrate the efficiency of the developed algorithm.Findings– A new approach is developed which uses the recently developed ACS algorithm for the optimization.Originality/value– Previously, graph theoretical method had been used for the formation of suboptimal cycle bases. Here, optimization is performed using ACS algorithm for the first time. VL - 27 IS - 4 SN - 0264-4401 DO - 10.1108/02644401011044586 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/02644401011044586 AU - Kaveh A. AU - Daei M. PY - 2010 Y1 - 2010/01/01 TI - Suboptimal cycle bases of graphs using ant colony system algorithm T2 - Engineering Computations PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 485 EP - 494 Y2 - 2024/03/29 ER -