• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.65-80
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• 2014

This paper reports on the development of a minimum cost design model and its application for obtaining economic designs for reinforced High Strength Concrete (HSC) T-sections in bending under ultimate limit state conditions. Cost objective functions, behavior constraint including material nonlinearities of steel and HSC, conditions on strain compatibility in steel and concrete and geometric design variable constraints are derived and implemented within the Conjugate Gradient optimization algorithm. Particular attention is paid to problem formulation, solution behavior and economic considerations. A typical example problem is considered to illustrate the applicability of the minimum cost design model and solution methodology. Results are confronted to design solutions derived from conventional design office methods to evaluate the performance of the cost model and its sensitivity to a wide range of unit cost ratios of construction materials and various classes of HSC described in Eurocode2. It is shown, among others that optimal solutions achieved using the present approach can lead to substantial savings in the amount of construction materials to be used. In addition, the proposed approach is practically simple, reliable and computationally effective compared to standard design procedures used in current engineering practice.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2009

The paper describes results of a sensitivity study on an optimum mooring cost as a function of safety factor and allowable maximum offset of the offshore floating structure by finding the anchor leg component size and the declination angle. A harmony search (HS) based mooring optimization program was developed to conduct the study. This mooring optimization model was integrated with a frequency-domain global motion analysis program to assess both cost and design constraints of the mooring system. To find a trend of anchor leg system cost for the proposed sensitivity study, optimum costs after a certain number of improvisation were found and compared. For a case study a turret-moored FPSO with 3 ${\times}$ 3 anchor leg system was considered. To better guide search for the optimum cost, three different penalty functions were applied. The results show that the presented HS-based cost-optimum offshore mooring design tool can be used to find optimum mooring design values such as declination angle and horizontal end point separation as well as a cost-optimum mooring system in case either the allowable maximum offset or factor of safety varies.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.379-392
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• 2020

The paper presents a Life-Cycle Cost-based optimization framework for wind-excited tall buildings equipped with Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs). The objective is to minimize the Life-Cycle Cost that comprises initial costs of the structure, the control system and costs related to repair, maintenance and downtime over the building's lifetime. The integrated optimization of structural sections and mass ratio of the TMDs is carried out, leading to a set of Pareto optimal solutions. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is that, differently from the traditional optimal design approach, it allows to perform the unified design of both the structure and the control system in a Life Cycle Cost Analysis framework. The procedure quantifies wind-induced losses, related to structural and nonstructural damage, considering the stochastic nature of the loads (wind velocity and direction), the specificity of the structural modeling (e.g., non-shear-type vibration modes and torsional effects) and the presence of the TMDs. Both serviceability and ultimate limit states related to the structure and the TMDs' damage are adopted for the computation of repair costs. The application to a case study tall building allows to demonstrate the efficiency of the procedure for the integrated design of the structure and the control system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.361-375
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• 2014

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between thickness and height of the axially symmetric cylindrical reinforced concrete (RC) walls by the help of a meta-heuristic optimization procedure. The material cost of the wall which includes concrete, reinforcement and formwork, was chosen as objective function of the optimization problem. The wall thickness, compressive strength of concrete and diameter of reinforcement bars were defined as design variables and tank volume, radius and height of the wall, loading condition and unit cost of material were defined as design constants. Numerical analyses of the wall were conducted by using superposition method (SPM) considering ACI 318-Building code requirements for structural concrete. The optimum wall thickness-height relationship was investigated under three main cases related with compressive strength of concrete and density of the stored liquid. According to the results, the proposed method is effective on finding the optimum design with minimum cost.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.3 no.5
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• pp.313-334
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• 2006

A novel formulation aiming to achieve optimal design of reinforced concrete (RC) structures is presented here. Optimal sizing and reinforcing for beam and column members in multi-bay and multistory RC structures incorporates optimal stiffness correlation among all structural members and results in cost savings over typical-practice design solutions. A Nonlinear Programming algorithm searches for a minimum cost solution that satisfies ACI 2005 code requirements for axial and flexural loads. Material and labor costs for forming and placing concrete and steel are incorporated as a function of member size using RS Means 2005 cost data. Successful implementation demonstrates the abilities and performance of MATLAB's (The Mathworks, Inc.) Sequential Quadratic Programming algorithm for the design optimization of RC structures. A number of examples are presented that demonstrate the ability of this formulation to achieve optimal designs.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.8 no.4 s.30
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• pp.159-179
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• 2006

By using the current road design method that is based on the regulation about structure and facilities standard of the road and the route plan guide of a national road and the alignment optimization road design method which is studied in the inside and outside of country, this study operate the route plan of the sample study and compare and analysis the route character, consequently the current design method has local optimization that is formed the plan by the stage and the section. Alignment optimization road design has the system optimal route search. But cost function has limite that caused by construction parameter that is not included in cost function. So we design a road route included cost function in main fields. As a result, we obtain a realistic and economically road route. The alignment optimization road design model has to be made up some problems, like the change of vertical gradient in the tunnel section, though this defects it has a lot of merits as a geometric design tool, especially in the feasibility study and the scheme design.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.974-982
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• 2009

To improve the effectiveness and economics the bridge design methodology considering the bridge/rail longitudinal analysis and bridge/vehicle dynamic effect suggested in this study. The reliability-based Life-Cycle Costs(LCC) effective optimum design is applied to a 2-main steel girder bridge, 5$\times$(1@50m) for comparison with conventional design, initial cost optimization and equivalent LCC optimization. As a result of the optimum design based on reliability, it may be stated that the design of High-Speed railway bridges considering the bridge/rail longitudinal analysis and bridge/vehicle dynamic effect are more efficient than typical existing bridges and LCC optimization without respect to bridge/rail longitudinal analysis and bridge/vehicle dynamic effect. The result of optimization design considering the interaction, design methodology suggested in this study, is higher than result of initial cost optimization design in initial cost, but that has the advantage than result of initial cost optimization design in expected LCC.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.1561-1570
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• 1997

This study explores the treatment of the max-value cost function over a parameter interval in parametric optimization. To avoid the computational burden of the transformation treatment using an artificial variable, a direct treatment of the original max-value cost function is proposed. It is theoretically shown that the transformation treatment results in demanding an additional equality constraint of dual variables as a part of the Kuhn-Tucker necessary conditions. Also, it is demonstrated that the usability and feasibility conditions on the search direction of the transformation treatment retard convergence rate. To investigate numerical performances of both treatments, typical optimization algorithms in ADS are employed to solve a min-max steady-state response optimization. All the algorithm tested reveal that the suggested direct treatment is more efficient and stable than the transformation treatment. Also, the better performing of the direct treatment over the transformation treatment is clearly shown by constrasting the convergence paths in the design space of the sample problem. Six min-max transient response optimization problems are also solved by using both treatments, and the comparisons of the results confirm that the performances of the direct treatment is better than those of the tranformation treatment.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.1-5
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• 2009

It is necessary to develop an efficient optimization technique to optimize engineering structures that have given design spaces, discrete design values, and several design goals. In this study, an optimum algorithm based on the genetic algorithm was applied to the multi-object problem to obtain an optimum solution that simultaneously minimizes the structural weight and construction cost of panel blocks in ship structures. The cost model was used in this study, which includes the cost of adjusting the weld-induced deformation and applying the deformation control methods, in addition to the cost of the material and the welding cost usually included in the normal cost model. By using the proposed cost model, more realistic optimum design results can be expected.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.262-271
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• 1998

Recent, more and more steel deck bridges are adopted for the design of long span bridges and the upgrading of existing concrete deck bridges, mainly because of reduced self weight, higher stiffness and efficient erection compared to concrete decks. The main objective of this study is to propose on formulation of the design optimizations to develop an optimal desist program required for optimum desist for orthotropic steel-deck bridges. The objective function of the optimization is formulated as a minimum initial cost design problem. The behavior and design constraints are formulated based on the ASD and LRFD criteria of the Korean Bridge Design Code(1996). The optimum design program developed in this study consists of two steps. In the first step the system optimization of the steel box girder bridges is carried out. And in the second step the program provided the optimum design of the orthotropic steel-deck with close ribs. In the optimal design program the analysis module for the deck optimization is based on the Pelican Esslinger method. The optimizer module of the program utilizes the ADS(Automated Desist Synthesis) routines using the optimization techniques fuor constrained optimization. From the results of real application examples, The cost effectiveness of optimum orthotropic steel-deck bridges designs based on both ASD and LRFD methods is investigated by comparing the results with those of conventional designs, and it may be concluded that the design developed in this study seems efficient and robust for the optimization of orthotropic steel-deck bridges