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Project

Structural design optimization taking into account practical constraints

Numerical design optimization has a high potential in the field of structural engineering: it allows for a reduction of the construction cost (in economical and ecological terms) as well as the engineering cost (by partial automation of the design process). Nevertheless, practicing structural engineers seem to hesitate to adopt optimization as a daily design tool. One of the reasons is that the optimized design must fulfill numerous practical constraints in order to be buildable: member sections must be chosen from a discrete set of commercially available profiles, connections must satisfy complex rules in order to ensure structural integrity and weldability, etc. Existing optimization methods cannot cope with these constraints in an efficient way. As a consequence, design optimization is usually followed by a postprocessing step where the practical constraints are enforced manually. This operation is cumbersome, time consuming, and may lead to a suboptimal design. The aim of the proposed project is to develop novel design optimization methods that can take into account practical constraints, so avoiding the need for a manual postprocessing step.
Date:1 Oct 2015 →  30 Sep 2019
Keywords:structurele optimalisatie gebouwen
Disciplines:Building engineering