Weight optimization of stainless‐steel built‐up structural elements

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes the use of stainless‐steel as a structural material, discusses current structural design considerations, reviews recent research work, and highlights important findings and developments.Over the past 25 years, structural design codes for stainless‐steel have been introduced or substantially altered or are still being modified, while at the same time there is a growing interest in the use of stainless‐steel in construction. Realistic modeling of structural elements of stainless‐steel plays an important role in the analysis and design of steel framed structures. Structural element modeling and optimization using stainless‐steel, in case a built‐up column, can contribute to existing research on stainless‐steel. The object under consideration is a stainless‐steel built‐up column, which is classified as atypical structural elements. The purpose of this optimization problem is to perform the minimization of the weight of the selected built‐up column, when the height of the column and the load acting on it are known. The built‐up column is considered with two different types of cross‐sectional chords: at first with circular (CHS) cross‐sectional chords and then with elliptical (EHS) cross‐sectional chords.A genetic algorithm based optimum design is presented for such a built‐up column. The design algorithm obtains a built‐up column with the least weight by selecting appropriate sections from standard set of duplex stainless‐steel hollow elliptical cross‐sections. The optimization model accounts for the strength and stability constraints. The built‐up column is under action of compressive axial force, bending moment and combination compressive axial force and bending moment. The parameters under consideration include the height and width of the outer cross‐section of the column's chords, the ratio of the outer cross‐sectional dimensions to the thickness and the initial eccentricity of the load. The computation results showed that the chosen optimization model and genetic algorithm allow efficiently obtaining the column of minimum weight, where the variables are column chord cross‐section and diagonals cross‐section. The design algorithm used to solve the problem is described in detail in this work.Until today, there is known that the lack of information prevented the recommended methodology from being properly established. Because of this, the obtained results confirmed that these types of structural elements of the steel in question are needed to develop a more efficient design of stainless‐steel structures in the design method and thus contribute to its wider use in construction.