APPLICATION OF TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHMS ON STEEL BUILDINGS

Abstract

Industrial steel sheds are very common as warehouses and are used by almost all industries. They are also widely used in business parks or sports activity center. For such structures, having large plan dimensions, economy becomes an important consideration. Design of such structures is done in various software packages available and the number of frames assigned for preliminary design is based on the experience of engineer and mostly on the conservative side. 1-lowever, with the use of various optimization algorithms available, cost of the structure can be reduced to great levels by optimizing the topology. Apart from cost, a significant amount of time can also be saved as the erection and fabrication would then be required for a lesser number of frames. The study presents the simultaneous cost, topology and standard cross-section optimization of single story industrial steel building structures. The considered structures are consisted from main portal frames, which are mutually connected with purlins. The optimization is performed by the Genetic algorithm (GA) approach. The proposed algorithm minimizes the structure's material and labor costs, determines the optimal topology with the optimal number of portal frames and purlins as well as the optimal standard cross-sections of steel members.