Economic System Maps: Construction and Application to Optimal Structural Design

The theoretical background, construction, and application of Economic System Maps (ESM) to several practical structural engineering problems are presented in this paper. ESM methods are applied to girder sizing in a uniformly-loaded steel floor system, three uniformly-loaded two-way reinforced concrete floor systems, and three steel shear connections. In general, ESM methods can be applied to a wide variety of top-level optimal system selection problems as well as very specific optimal parameter selection within a target system. Because optimal design data is pre-generated and presented in convenient 3-dimensional graphs, a designer can select optimal systems and parameters without needing to actually use optimization software. Sensitivity of an ESM to variable market and cost data is a significant challenge to its general usefulness. Work is currently underway to address this sensitivity and preliminary results are promising.