• Advances in Computational Design
• /
• v.9 no.1
• /
• pp.1-23
• /
• 2024

Present paper deals with the cost effective design of reinforced concrete building frame employing unified particle swarm optimization (UPSO). A building frame with G+8 stories have been adopted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present algorithm. Effect of seismic loads and wind load have been considered as per Indian Standard (IS) 1893 (Part-I) and IS 875 (Part-III) respectively. Analysis of the frame has been carried out in STAAD Pro software.The design loads for all the beams and columns obtained from STAAD Pro have been given as input of the optimization algorithm. Next, cost optimization of all beams and columns have been carried out in MATLAB environment using UPSO, considering the safety and serviceability criteria mentioned in IS 456. Cost of formwork, concrete and reinforcement have been considered to calculate the total cost. Reinforcement of beams and columns has been calculated with consideration for curtailment and feasibility of laying the reinforcement bars during actual construction. The numerical analysis ensures the accuracy of the developed algorithm in providing the cost optimized design of RC building frame considering safety, serviceability and constructional feasibilities. Further, Monte Carlo simulations performed on the numerical results, proved the consistency and robustness of the developed algorithm. Thus, the present algorithm is capable of giving a cost effective design of RC building frame, which can be adopted directly in construction site without making any changes.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.229-239
• /
• 2018

Purpose: There is a difficulty in Environmental Stress Screening (ESS) test design for weapon system's electrical/electronic components/products in small and medium-sized enterprises. To overcome this difficulty, I propose an easy ESS test design approach algorithm that is optimized with only one environment tolerance design information parameter (${\Delta}T$). Methods: To propose the mass production weapon system ESS test design for cost-effective optimization, I define an optimum cost-effective mathematical model ESS test algorithm model based on modified MIL-HDBK-344, MIL-HDBK-2164 and DTIC Technical Report 2477. Results: I clearly confirmed and obtained the quantitative data of ESS effectiveness and cost optimization along our ESS test design algorithm through the practical case. I will expect that proposed ESS test method is used for ESS process improvement activity and cost cutting of mass production weapon system manufacturing cost in small and medium-sized enterprises. Conclusion: In order to compare the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, I compared the effectiveness of the existing ESS test and the proposed algorithm ESS test based on the existing weapon system circuit card assembly for signal processing. As a result of the comparison, it was confirmed that the test time was reduced from 573.0 minutes to 517.2minutes (9.74% less than existing test time).

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2009.05a
• /
• pp.203-211
• /
• 2009

Korean public owners who order public multi-family housing construction projects have yet to gain access to a model for predicting construction cost. For this reason, their construction cost prediction is mainly dependent upon historic data and experience. In this paper, a cost-prediction model based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) in the design phase of public multi-family housing construction projects was developed. The developed model can determine the total construction cost by estimating the different Building, Civil, Mechanical, Electronic and Telecommunication, and Landscaping work costs. Model validation showed an accuracy of 97.56%, confirming the model's excellent viability. The developed model can thus be used to predict the construction cost to be shouldered by public owners before the design is completed. Moreover, any change orders during the design phase can be immediately applied to the model, and various construction costs by design alternative can be verified using this model. Therefore, it is expected that public owners can exercise effective design management by using the developed cost prediction model. The use of such an effective cost prediction model can enable the owners to accurately determine in advance the construction cost and prevent increase or decrease in cost arising from the design changes in the design phase, such as change order. The model can also prevent the untoward increase in the duration of the design phase as it can effectively control unnecessary change orders.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.16-32
• /
• 2020

Cost and time control of projects is important in preventing project failure. However, achieving effective cost and time control in practice is often challenging. The challenges of project cost and time control in practice are investigated by carrying out a questionnaire survey on the top 150 construction contractors in the UK followed by in-depth semi-structured interviews of practitioners from 15 construction companies in the country. Quantitative analysis reveals that design change is the most important factor inhibiting the ability of UK contractors from effectively controlling both the cost and time of construction projects. Four of the top five factors inhibiting effective cost control are also the top factors inhibiting effective time control albeit in a different order. These top factors-design changes, inaccurate evaluation of project time/duration, risk and uncertainty, non-performance of subcontractors and nominated suppliers were also found to be endogenous factors to the project. Additionally, qualitative analysis of the interviews reveals 16 key challenges to prevent for effective project cost and time control in practice. These are classified into four categorised based on where they stem from as follows; from the organisation (1. Lack of integration of cost and time during project control, 2. lack of management buy-in, 3. complicated project control systems and processes, 4. lack of a project control training regime); from the construction management/project management approach (5. Lapses in integration of interfaces, 6. project control not being implemented from the early stages of a project, 7. inefficient utilisation and control of labour, 8. limited time devoted to planning how a project will be controlled at the outset); from the client; (9. Excessive authorisation gates, 10. use of adversarial and non-collaborative forms of contracts, 11. communication problems within client set-up, 12. obstructive client representatives) and; from the project team (13. Lack of detailed/complete design, 14. lack of trust among the project partners, 15. limited time devoted to project control on site, 16. non-factual reporting). The study posits that knowledge of these project control inhibiting factors and challenges is the first step at ensuring they are avoided and enable the implementation of a more effective project cost and time control process in practice.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 1999.04a
• /
• pp.305-312
• /
• 1999

This study is intended to propose a systematic and practical life cycle cost(LCC) model for the development of the reliability-based seismic safety and cost-effective performance criteria for design and upgrading of long-span PC bridges. The LCC models consist of five cost functions such as initial cost, repair/replacement cost, human losses, road user cost, and indirect losses of regional economy. The proposed model Is successfully expressed in temrs of Park-Ang damage indices and life cycle damage probability obtained from SMART-DRAIN-2DX which is an existing algorithm for nonlinear time history analysis. The proposed LCC model is successfully applied to a viaduct constructed by PSM, in Seoul. Based on the observations, the proposed systematic procedure for the formulation of LCC model may be useful for the development of the reliability-based seismic safety and cost-effective performance criteria for design and upgrading of long-span PC bridges.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.11-24
• /
• 2009

In China, the oil and natural gas resources of Bohai Bay are mainly marginal oil fields. It is necessary to build both ice-resistant and economical offshore platforms. However, risk is involved in the design, construction, utilization, maintenance of offshore platforms as uncertain events may occur within the life-cycle of a platform under the extreme ice load. In this study, the optimum design model of the expected life-cycle cost for ice-resistant platforms based on cost-effectiveness criterion is proposed. Multiple performance demands of the structure, facilities and crew members, associated with the failure assessment criteria and evaluation functions of costs of construction, consequences of structural failure modes including damage, revenue loss, death and injury as well as discounting cost over time are considered. An efficient approximate method of the global reliability analysis for the offshore platforms is provided, which converts the implicit nonlinear performance function in the conventional reliability analysis to linear explicit one. The proposed life-cycle optimum design formula are applied to a typical ice-resistant platform in Bohai Bay, and the results demonstrate that the life-cycle cost-effective optimum design model is more rational compared to the conventional design.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2005.04a
• /
• pp.704-711
• /
• 2005

Recently Life Cycle Cost Analysis for civil infrastructures such as pavements, bridges, and dams has been emphasized However, so far, there are few systems available for life cycle cost analysis of bridges at design stage. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a user-friendly life-cycle cost analysis system for LCC-effective optimal design decision making at design stage. The program is based on the proposed LCC model, formulation, analysis modules and systematic procedure that suit Korean construction conditions. It is expected that the developed system can be effectively utilized for more LCC-effective design of bridges. It is applied to an actual bridge design project in order to demonstrate its effectiveness and applicability.

• Advances in Computational Design
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.49-69
• /
• 2018

This paper shows an optimal design for reinforced concrete rectangular combined footings based on a criterion of minimum cost. The classical design method for reinforced concrete rectangular combined footings is: First, a dimension is proposed that should comply with the allowable stresses (Minimum stress should be equal or greater than zero, and maximum stress must be equal or less than the allowable capacity withstand by the soil); subsequently, the effective depth is obtained due to the maximum moment and this effective depth is checked against the bending shear and the punching shear until, it complies with these conditions, and then the steel reinforcement is obtained, but this is not guaranteed that obtained cost is a minimum cost. A numerical experimentation shows the model capability to estimate the minimum cost design of the materials used for a rectangular combined footing that supports two columns under an axial load and moments in two directions at each column in accordance to the building code requirements for structural concrete and commentary (ACI 318S-14). Numerical experimentation is developed by modifying the values of the rectangular combined footing to from "d" (Effective depth), "b" (Short dimension), "a" (Greater dimension), "${\rho}_{P1}$" (Ratio of reinforcement steel under column 1), "${\rho}_{P2}$" (Ratio of reinforcement steel under column 2), "${\rho}_{yLB}$" (Ratio of longitudinal reinforcement steel in the bottom), "${\rho}_{yLT}$" (Ratio of longitudinal reinforcement steel at the top). Results show that the optimal design is more economical and more precise with respect to the classical design. Therefore, the optimal design presented in this paper should be used to obtain the minimum cost design for reinforced concrete rectangular combined footings.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
• /
• 1999.07a
• /
• pp.65-70
• /
• 1999

In this paper, the cost-effective design of output reactor which is used to suppress the over-voltage at the motor terminal in the Adjustable Speed Drives(ASD) application is proposed. In the elevator drive system, the power cable length is relatively shorter than other ASD applications and then the over-voltage at the motor terminal depends on the frequency characteristics of the output reactor at the over-voltage operating frequency. The over-voltage suppression mechanism of output reactor in ASD application is analyzed and the dominant parameters of output reactor for the over-voltage suppression are extracted. Using these parameters as the design values and considering the high frequency characteristics of iron core in the reactor, a new cost-effective structure of output reactor is proposed. Experimental results of the conventional reactor and the proposed reactor with a 15kW induction motor are given to verify the proposed scheme.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.720-723
• /
• 2004

This study is intended to propose a systematic approach for determining optimum Life-Cycle Cost (LCC)-effective seismic design for continuous PSC bridges considering lifetime expected seismic risks. In the paper, a set of cost function for LCC analysis of bridges is proposed. The total LCC functions consist of initial cost and direct/indirect damage costs considering repair/replacement costs, human losses and property damage costs, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. The damage costs are expressed in terms of Park-Ang median global damage indices (Park and Ang, 1985) and lifetime damage probabilities. The proposed approach is applied to model bridges of both moderate seismicity regions like Korea and high seismicity regions like Japan. Since, in case of bridges, a number of parameters may have an influence on optimal target reliability, various sensitivity analyses are performed in this study. It may be expected that the proposed approach can be effectively utilized for the development of cost-effective performance criteria for design and upgrading of various types of bridges as well as continuous PC bridges.