Spatial zoning for better structural topology design and performance

Dennis P.H Claessens,Sjonnie Boonstra,Hèrm Hofmeyer

doi:10.1016/j.aei.2020.101162

Dennis P.H Claessens, Sjonnie Boonstra + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2020.101162

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Abstract

A new three-dimensional spatial zoning procedure that has been tailored to structural design is presented in this work. Zoning is the grouping of spaces or sub-parts of spaces such that the resulting spatial layout is logical from a disciplinary perspective. Two automated structural design methods, so-called grammars, have been defined to generate structural designs for zoned building spatial designs. The first grammar, here termed stable design grammar, places structural slabs at the boundaries of a zone, and columns at places where a zone intersects with a space. The second grammar, here termed unstable grammar, generates a structural frame that is unstable by definition. Via a new stabilization method, which is also presented in this work, the unstable structural frame is stabilized by considering the boundaries of a zone for the placement of stabilizing measures. In a case study, the zoning procedure is applied in conjunction with each of the design grammars to three distinct building spatial designs. The case study shows—for both design grammars—that structural designs use less material and are stiffer when they are generated based on a zoned building spatial design. Moreover, the zoning procedure has been tailored such that it yields a subset of all possible zoned designs for which, in general, the generated structural designs perform well.

Highlights

Structural design of buildings has remained a human task in a building industry that is automated more and more
The case studies show that the zoning procedure leads to better performing structural designs, it has not been verified if these constraints exclude zoned de signs that still result in a structural design that performs well for the objectives
This paper presents a new method for 3D zoning of building spatial designs, which is tailored to structural design

Summary

Introduction

Structural design of buildings has remained a human task in a building industry that is automated more and more. Finding the best potential for any discipline for a given BSD is important for assessing a BSD’s quality with respect to that discipline This applies to structural design, and this work presents a zoning method that has been im plemented in the toolbox, aiming to improve the designs resulting from the toolbox’ automated structural design procedure. To be able to resolve the structural instabilities in method (b), a new struc tural stabilization method has been implemented in the toolbox, which is similar to the method published by Smulders and Hofmeyer [31] Both methods (a) and (b) are used in this work to investigate the in fluence of the different settings for the zoning procedure on the per formance of the structural design. A set of zoned designs can be helpful, because it offers alternatives from which a designer or an optimization method can choose

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