• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.5-13
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• 1994

In the fields of rail and road design, most vertical alignment design have been thus far heavily dependent upon trial-and-errors of experienced engineers. However, it has long been inefficient in productivity of designing process. In order to overcome this inefficiency, this paper presents the optimal vertical alignment design method using mathematical optimization techniques. For optimization, mathematical model to minimize the construction cost is formulated and the separable programming technique and the Zoutendijk method are introduced to solve it. As result, it is shown that this optimization technique can give efficient solutions to all vertical alignment design fields with properly-estimated cost function.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.457-482
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• 2014

This paper summarizes available literature on the optimization of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The objective of optimization (e.g. minimum cost or weight), the design variables and the constraints considered by different studies vary widely and therefore, different optimization methods have been employed to provide the optimal design of RC beams, whether as isolated structural components or as part of a structural frame. The review of literature suggests that nonlinear deterministic approaches can be efficiently employed to provide optimal design of RC beams, given the small number of variables. This paper also presents spreadsheet implementation of cost optimization of RC beams in the familiar MS Excel environment to illustrate the efficiency of the exhaustive enumeration method for such small discrete search spaces and to promote its use by engineers and researchers. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis is performed on the contribution of various design parameters to the variability of the overall cost of RC beams.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.48-56
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• 2009

This paper presents the procedure for the optimal design of a PSC-I girder bridge considering life cycle cost (LCC). The load carrying capacity curves for the concrete deck, PSC-I girder and $\pi$-type pier were derived and used for the estimate of service lives. Total life cycle cost for the service life was calculated as sum of initial cost, damage cost, maintenance cost, repair and rehabilitation cost, user cost, and disposal cost. The advanced First Order Second Moment method was used to estimate the damage cost. The optimization method was applied to the design of PSC-I girder bridge. The objective function was set to the annual cost, which is defined by dividing the total life cycle cost by the service life, and constraints were formulated on the basis of Korean Standards. The optimal design was performed for various service lives and the effects of design factors were investigated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.3
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• pp.337-348
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• 2023

The optimization of reinforced concrete (RC) cantilever retaining walls is a complex problem and requires the use of advanced techniques like metaheuristic algorithms. For this purpose, an optimization model must first be developed, which involves mathematical complications, multidisciplinary knowledge, and programming skills. This task has proven to be too arduous and has halted the mainstream acceptance of optimization. Therefore, it is necessary to unravel the complications of optimization into an easily applicable form. Currently, the most commonly used method for designing retaining walls is by following the proportioning limits provided by the ACI handbook. However, these limits, derived manually, are not verified by any optimization technique. There is a need to validate or modify these limits, using optimization algorithms to consider them as optimal limits. Therefore, this study aims to propose updated proportioning limits for the economical design of a RC cantilever retaining wall through a comprehensive parametric investigation using the genetic algorithm (GA). Multiple simulations are run to examine various design parameters, and trends are drawn to determine effective ranges. The optimal limits are derived for 5 geometric and 3 reinforcement variables and validated by comparison with their predecessor, ACI's preliminary proportioning limits. The results indicate close proximity between the optimized and code-provided ranges; however, the use of optimal limits can lead to additional cost optimization. Modifications to achieve further optimization are also discussed. Besides the geometric variables, other design parameters not covered by the ACI building code, like reinforcement ratios, bar diameters, and material strengths, and their effects on cost optimization, are also discussed. The findings of this investigation can be used by experienced engineers to refine their designs, without delving into the complexities of optimization.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.693-699
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• 2013

This paper describes a method for size optimization of the major design variables for solar water heating systems at the stage of concept design. The widely used RETScreen simulation tool was used for optimization. Currently, the RETScreen tool itself does not provide a function for optimization of the design parameters. In this study, an optimizer was combined with the software. A comparative study was performed to evaluate the RETScreen-based approach with the case study of a solar heating system in an office building. The optimized results using the RETScreen model were compared to previously published results with the TRNSYS model. The objective function of the optimization is the life-cycle cost of the system. The optimized design results from the RETScreen model showed good agreement with the optimized TRNSYS results for the solar collector area and storage volume, but presented a slight difference for the collector slope angle in terms of the converged direction of the solutions. The energy cost, life-cycle cost, and thermal performance regarding collector efficiency, system efficiency, and solar fraction were compared as well, and the RETScreen model showed good agreement with the TRNSYS model for the conditions of the base case and optimized design.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.295-307
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• 2023

This paper presents an optimization of the reinforced concrete ribbed slab in terms of minimum CO₂ emissions and an economic justification of the final optimal design. The design variables are six geometry variables including the slab thickness, the ribs spacing, the rib width at the lower and toper end, the depth of the rib and the bar diameter of the reinforcement, and the seventh variable defines the concrete strength. The objective function is considered to be the minimum amount of carbon dioxide gas (CO₂) emission and at the same time, the optimal design is economical. Seven significant design constraints of American Concrete Institute's Standard were considered. A robust metaheuristic optimization method called improved dolphin echolocation and ant colony optimization (IDEACO) has been used to obtain the best possible answer. At optimal design, the three most important sources of CO₂ emissions include concrete, steel reinforcement, and formwork that the contribution of them are 63.72, 32.17, and 4.11 percent respectively. Formwork, concrete, steel reinforcement, and CO₂ are the four most important sources of cost with contributions of 67.56, 19.49, 12.44, and 0.51 percent respectively. Results obtained by IDEACO show that cost and CO₂ emissions are closely related, so the presented method is a practical solution that was able to reduce the cost and CO₂ emissions simultaneously.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.541-548
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• 2006

This study presents a structural cost optimization method for building frame system using high-strength steel members. In, this optimization method, the material cost of steel member is involved in objective function to find the optimal cost of building frame systems. Genetic Algorithm is adopted to optimizer to find structural cost optimization. The proposed adapted to structural design of 3.5 stories example buildings with buildings frame systems. As a result, The proposed optimization method can be effectively adapted to cost optimization of building frame systems using high-strength steel members.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.271-294
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• 2014

In recent years, along with the advances made in performance-based design optimization, the need for fast calculation of response parameters in dynamic analysis procedures has become an important issue. The main problem in this field is the extremely high computational demand of time-history analyses which may convert the solution algorithm to illogical ones. Two simplifying strategies have shown to be very effective in tackling this problem; first, simplified nonlinear modeling investigating minimum level of structural modeling sophistication, second, wavelet analysis of earthquake records decreasing the number of acceleration points involved in time-history loading. In this paper, we try to develop an efficient framework, using both strategies, to solve the performance-based multi-objective optimal design problem considering the initial cost and the seismic damage cost of steel moment-frame structures. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is employed as the optimization algorithm to search the Pareto optimal solutions. The constraints of the optimization problem are considered in accordance with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommended design specifications. The results from numerical application of the proposed framework demonstrate the capabilities of the framework in solving the present multi-objective optimization problem.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.28-29
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• 2006

Computational approaches for the aerodynamic design and optimization are introduced. In this paper the aerodynamic design methods and applications, which have been applied to various aerospace vehicles at Konkuk University, are introduced. It is shown that system approximation technique reduces computational cost for CFD analysis and improves efficiency for the design optimization process.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.567-577
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• 2017

The traditional design procedure of a prestressed concrete (PC) cable-stayed bridge is complex and time-consuming. The designers have to repeatedly modify the configuration of the large number of design parameters to obtain a feasible design scheme which maybe not an economical design. In order to efficiently achieve an optimum design for PC cable-stayed bridges, a multi-parameter optimization technique is proposed. In this optimization technique, the number of prestressing tendons in girder is firstly set as one of design variables, as well as cable forces, cable areas and cross-section sizes of the girders and the towers. The stress and displacement constraints are simultaneously utilized to ensure the safety and serviceability of the structure. The target is to obtain the minimum cost design for a PC cable-stayed bridge. Finally, this optimization technique is carried out by a developed PC cable-stayed bridge optimization program involving the interaction of the parameterized automatically modeling program, the finite element structural analysis program and the optimization algorithm. A low-pylon PC cable-stayed bridge is selected as the example to test the proposed optimization technique. The optimum result verifies the capability and efficiency of the optimization technique, and the significance to optimize the number of prestressing tendons in the girder. The optimum design scheme obtained by the application can achieve a 24.03% reduction in cost, compared with the initial design.