Optimum design of pin-jointed aluminum structures to AA-ASD using three Meta-heuristic algorithms

Abstract

The main motivation for the current study is to investigate the weight advantage of the aluminum material on pin-jointed (truss) structures. For this purpose, optimization algorithms that find the most suitable structural designs with aluminum and steel materials have been developed. The criterion for finding optimum designs is to minimize the weight of the structure and met the design constraints. The constraint functions are derived according to the “American Institute of Steel Structures – Allowable Stress Design” (AISC-ASD) and “Aluminum Association - Allowable Stress Design” (AA-ASD) design codes. To increase the reliability of the obtained results, three robust methods named the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO), and Brainstorming Optimization (BSO) algorithms are utilized for the proposed optimization problem. Four real-scale pin-jointed structures are used to research the weight advantage of aluminum structures. Three of these structures are real-scale truss structures that were previously optimized as made of steel elements by other metaheuristics. The last pin-jointed structure is the real case project which is modeled and optimized for the first time in this study. According to the obtained results, significant optimal design differences are determined between the construction of the tackled pin-jointed structures with aluminum or steel structural elements. Considering other advantages such as transportation and maintenance, using aluminum material in pin-jointed structures is recommended.