Minimum cost plastic design of steel beams using Eurocode 3

Abstract

This paper presents a model for minimum cost plastic design of steel beams according to the Eurocode3 (EC3). The objective function comprises material cost and fabrication costs. The constraint functions are set to meet design requirements of Eurocode3 (EC3). They consist on plastic bending resistance constraints, plastic vertical shear resistance, design constraints derived from Eurocode3 (EC3), deflection due to both dead and live loads and current practices rules.The minimum cost plastic design process is developed through the use of the Generalized Reduced Gradient (GRG) algorithm. Two numerical examples are given to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model. The optimized results are compared to traditional design solutions from conventional design office methods to evaluate the performance of the developed cost model. Substantial savings were achieved through this approach. In addition, this study shows the difference between steel beams optimized for minimum cost and minimum weight. The proposed approach is practically simple, reliable and computationally effective compared to classical designs procedures used by designers and engineers.