This paper presents a real-world industrial case study on the force optimisation of a hydraulic cylinder in a mobile knuckle boom crane using the Bees Algorithm (BA). The primary objective is to minimize the maximum hydraulic cylinder force corresponding to system pressure during lifting operations without compromising payload capacity, kinematic feasibility, or operational safety. The optimisation variables include the mounting coordinates of the hydraulic cylinder and linkage points, which strongly influence mechanical advantage and force transmission. A CAD-integrated optimisation environment is developed by the Bees Algorithm with SolidWorks via the SolidWorks API, enabling direct simulation-based evaluation of candidate designs without requiring explicit analytical force models. The results demonstrate a notable reduction in the required hydraulic cylinder force, leading to lower system pressure, improved energy efficiency, and enhanced structural reliability. The Bees Algorithm is used as a global search strategy to explore the design space, while the Hooke-Jeeves (HJ) direct search method is used in hybrid form with the Bees Algorithm to improve local optimisation and convergence accuracy. The study confirms that the proposed the hybrid BA–HJ optimisation provides an effective balance between global exploration and local exploitation and is well suited for high-dimensional, nonlinear, and simulation-driven engineering optimisation problems. The proposed methodology is directly applicable to industrial hydraulic lifting systems and complex mechanical linkages, offering a practical and robust tool for performance-driven mechanical design. The results with the proposed approach validated on an industrial-scale mobile crane.
Kalyoncu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.