OPTIMAL DESIGN OF BEAM COLUMN RCC SECTIONS

Abstract

Designing a structure using conventional methodS of design with some personal experience of the designer and his intuition is likely to result in substantial economic loss.. The structural element is required to be sound not only from an engineering veiw point but also be the best or optimum in economic character. The present study is aimed at finding the optimal design of an important part of a structure- the beam-column. In this study rectangular (with reinforcement on two sides and on four sides) and circular cross sectional shapes of beam-column have been optimized. The most commonly used grades of concrete in design of beam-columns, M-20 and M-25 have also been used for the purpose of this study.. The grades of steel that have been used are Fe 250 and Fe 415, The optimization process was carried out by developing suitable computer programs using one of the most popular mathematical programming techniques, i.e. the Interior penality 'function method coupled with simplex method of optimization of un-e.constrained non-linear function.. The developed computer programs have been run on the DEC 2050 Computer available at the U.O.R, Roorkee. From the results thus obtained cost comparison for rect-angular and circular cross sections has been made to find the optimal cross sectional shape. Besides the effect of variation in width to depth ratio in cost of the cross section has bee. studied, Finally optimal design charts have been provided to help the designer to arrive at the optimum design.