Design Optimization of Civil Engineering Structures: A Retrospective

Abstract

This paper reviews work conducted by the writer over the past twenty-five years dealing with the computer-automated design of least-cost or least-weight civil engineering structures. The work owes its beginnings to Professor Mircea Cohn, who supervised the writer’s Ph.D. studies in the 1960’s concerning the optimal design of reinforced concrete frames. In fact, while numerical solution techniques have certainly changed significantly, the statement of the optimal design problem originally posed to the writer by Professor Cohn has changed remarkably little over the years.First reviewed are linear programming applications in the 1960s and 1970s to the optimal limit design of reinforced concrete and steel frameworks. Then considered is work conducted in the 1980s concerning the least-weight design of structural steel frameworks using Dual mathematical programming techniques. Finally presented is recent work in the 1990s dealing with the application of mathematical programming and optimality criteria techniques to the optimal design of steel and reinforced concrete structures.KeywordsReinforced ConcreteReinforce Concrete BeamReinforced Concrete FrameCivil Engineering StructureInterstorey DriftThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.