Designing regular graphs with the use of evolutionary algorithms

The paper deals with a fundamental problem arising in the design of optimal networks-the maximization of the number of spanning trees. To make the problem computationally tractable, we consider a class of regular graphs. The problem is solved with the use of the evolutionary algorithm and compared to the 2-opt method. The problem-specific genetic operators are introduced, Various experiments with different graph structures have been performed, the results are reported and discussed. The influence of introducing some preliminary knowledge about the problem on the algorithm effectiveness is studied.