Abstract
Structural optimization has matured from a narrow academic discipline, where researchers focused on optimum design of small idealized structural components and systems, to become the basis in modern design of complex structural systems. Some software applications in recent years have made these tools accessible to professional engineers, decision-makers and students outside the structural optimization research community. These software applications, mainly focused on aerospace, aeronautical, mechanical and naval structural systems, have incorporated the optimization component as an additional feature of the finite element software package. On the other hand though there is not a holistic optimization approach in terms of final design stage for real-world civil engineering structures such as buildings, bridges or more complex civil engineering structures. The optimization computing platform presented in this study is a generic real-world optimum design computing platform for civil structural systems and it is implemented within an innovative computing framework, founded on the current state of the art in topics like metaheuristic optimization, structural analysis and parallel computing. For demonstration purposes the application of the optimization computing platform in five real-world design projects is presented.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AISC-ASD (1989) Manual of steel construction-allowable stress design, 9 th edn. American Institute of Steel Construction, Chicago
Altair OptiStruct (2013) http://www.altairhyperworks.com/Product,19,OptiStruct.aspx. Accessed Sept 2013
Ang AH-S, Tang WH (1984) Probabilistic concepts in engineering planing and design. Decision, risk and reliability, vol II. Wiley, New York
ARUP (2013) http://www.arup.com/. Accessed Sept 2013
ASCE/SEI Standard 41-06 (2006) Seismic rehabilitation of existing buildings, prepublication edition. Structural Engineering Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers
ATC-58 (2009) Guidelines for seismic performance assessment of buildings. Applied Technology Council, Redwood City
Barricelli NA (1962) Numerical testing of evolution theories. Acta Biotheor 16:69–126
BS5950 (2000) Structural use of steelwork in building, part 1: code of Practice for Design - Rolled and Welded Sections, British Standards Institution
Charmpis DC, Lagaros ND, Papadrakakis M (2005) Multi-database exploration of large design spaces in the framework of cascade evolutionary structural sizing optimization. Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 194(30-33):3315–3330
Daskalakis K (2013). http://www.konstantiosdaskalakis.com Accessed Sept 2013
Der Kiureghian A (2005) First- and second-order reliability methods. In: Nikolaidis E, Ghiocel DM, Singhal S (eds) Chapter 14 in Engineering design reliability handbook. CRC Press, Boca Raton
Dorigo M, Stützle T (2004) Ant Colony Optimization. The MIT Press
Ebrahimi M, Farmani MR, Roshanian J (2011) Multidisciplinary design of a small satellite launch vehicle using particle swarm optimization. Struct Multidiscip Optim 44(6):773–784
EC2 (2004) Eurocode 2: Design of concrete structures-part 1: general rules and rules for buildings. European Committee for Standardisation, Brussels, Belgium, The European Standard EN 1992-1-1
EC3 (2005) Eurocode 3: Design of steel structures, part 1.1: general rules and rules for buildings. European Committee for Standardisation, Brussels, Belgium, The European Standard EN 1993-1-1
EC8 (2004) Eurocode 8: design of structures for earthquake resistance. European Committee for Standardisation, Brussels, Belgium, The European Standard EN 1998–1
FEMA-356 (2000) Prestandard and commentary for the seismic rehabilitation of buildings. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington DC, SAC Joint Venture
FEMA-445 (2006) Next-generation performance-based seismic design guidelines, program plan for new and existing buildings. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington
Geem ZW (2010) Recent advances in harmony search algorithm. Studies in Computational Intelligence, Springer
Genesis (2013) http://www.vrand.com/Genesis.html. Accessed Sept 2013
Ghobarah A, Abou-Elfath H, Biddah A (1999) Response-based damage assessment of structures. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 28(1):79–104
Giovenale P, Cornell CA, Esteva L (2004) Comparing the adequacy of alternative ground motion intensity measures for the estimation of structural responses. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 33(8):951–979
Hansen N, Ostermeier A (2001) Completely derandomized self-adaptation in evolution strategies. Evol Comput 9(2):159–195
Herzog, De Meuron (2013) http://www.herzogdemeuron.com. Accessed Sept 2013
Holland J (1975) Adaptation in natural and artificial systems. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbour
Hornlein HREM, Schittkowski K (1993) Software systems for structural optimization. International Series of Numerical Mathematics, Birkhauser
Igel C, Hansen N, Roth S (2007) Covariance matrix adaptation for multi-objective optimization. Evol Comput 15(1):1–28
Karaboga D, Basturk B (2008) On the performance of artificial bee colony algorithm. Appl Soft Comput 8(1):687–697
Kennedy J, Eberhart RC, Shi Y (2001) Swarm intelligence, series in evolutionary computation. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Kotinis M, Kulkarni A (2012) Multi-objective shape optimization of transonic airfoil sections using swarm intelligence and surrogate models. Struct Multidiscip Optim 45(5):747–758
Lagaros ND (2010) Multicomponent incremental dynamic analysis considering variable incident angle. Struct Infrastruct Eng 6(1–2):77–94
Lagaros ND (2013) http://users.ntua.gr/nlagaros/. Accessed Sept 2013
Lagaros ND, Karlaftis MG (2011) A critical assessment of metaheuristics for scheduling emergency infrastructure inspections. Swarm Evol Comput 1(3):147–163
Lagaros ND, Papadrakakis M (2012) Applied soft computing for optimum design of structures. Struct Multidiscip Optim 45:787–799
Le Riche R, Haftka RT (2012) On global optimization articles in SMO. Struct Multidiscip Optim 46(5):627–629
Liu P-L, Der Kiureghian A (1986) Multivariate distribution models with prescribed marginals and covariances. Probab Eng Mech 1(2):105–112
LS-DYNA (2013) http://www.lstc.com. Accessed Sept 2013
Michalewicz Z (2012) Genetic algorithms + data structures = evolution programs, 3rd Edition. Springer
Mitropoulou ChCh, Fourkiotis Y, Lagaros ND, Karlaftis MG (2013) Metaheuristics in structural design optimization. In: Gandomi AH, Yang X-S, Talatahari S, Alavi AH (eds) Metaheuristic applications in structures and infrastructures. Elsevier, pp 79–102
MSC Software (2013) http://www.mscsoftware.com. Accessed September 2013
Ponsich A, Coello CAC (2011) Differential Evolution performances for the solution of mixed-integer constrained process engineering problems. Appl Soft Comput J 11(1):399–409
PTW Architects (2013) http://www.ptw.com.au. Accessed Sept 2013
Rechenberg I (1973) Evolutionsstrategie – Optimierung technischer systeme nach prinzipien der biologischen Evolution. Fromman-Holzboog
Reh S, Beley J-D, Mukherjee S, Khor EH (2006) Probabilistic finite element analysis using ANSYS. Struct Saf 28(1–2):17–43
SAP2000 (2013) http://www.csiamerica.com/sap2000. Accessed Sept 2013
SCADA Pro (2013) http://www.scadapro.eu/. Accessed Sept 2013
Schuëller GI (2006) Developments in stochastic structural mechanics. Arch Appl Mech 75(10–12):755–773
Thomson W (1887) On the division of space with minimum partitional area. Acta Math 11(1–4):121–134
Storn RM, Price KV (1997) Differential evolution - a simple and efficient heuristic for global optimization over continuous spaces. J Glob Optim 11:341–359
Sullivan TJ, Calvi GM, Priestley MJN, Kowalsky MJ (2003) The limitations and performances of different displacement based design methods. J Earthq Eng 7(1):201–241
Tsompanakis Y, Lagaros ND, Papadrakakis M (2007) Structural optimization considering uncertainties. Taylor & Francis
Vamvatsikos D, Cornell CA (2002) Incremental dynamic analysis. Earthq Eng Struct Dyn 31(3):491–514
van Laarhoven PJ, Aarts EH (2010) Simulated annealing: theory and applications (mathematics and its applications). Kluwer Academic Publishers
Weaire D, Phelan R (1994) A counter-example to Kelvin’s conjecture on minimal surfaces. Philos Mag Lett 69:107–110
Yang X-S (2011) Metaheuristic optimization: algorithm analysis and open problems. Experimental Algorithms. Lect Notes Comput Sci 6630:21–32
Yang XS (2008) Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms. Luniver Press, Frome
YTONG (2004) Earthquake resistant design of load-bearing Ytong structures. Ytong Manual, Xella Porobeton
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Harris Maragkos and Nikolaos Bakas; the first one for providing the .SDB files for the test examples considered in this study, and both of them for helping to link the optimization computing platform with SAP2000 software.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lagaros, N.D. A general purpose real-world structural design optimization computing platform. Struct Multidisc Optim 49, 1047–1066 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-013-1027-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-013-1027-1