Consideration of Practical Design Issues in Formulating Structural Optimization for Design Automation

Most benchmarks in structural optimization have limited their design criteria to aspects of safety such as strength, stiffness and reliability. However, good practical designs must also consider design criteria based on cost. Therefore, structural optimization formulations must expand benchmarks to include design criteria relating to cost such as constructability, repetition of design and material procurement. This presentation will discuss what design constraints of practical design warrant inclusion in structural optimization techniques and possible challenges to expanding optimization techniques into using such criteria. The presentation will also facilitate a discussion with practitioners to prioritize what building systems can benefit from improvements in practical design techniques, and how structural optimization formulations can solve those challenges. The feedback from this presentation will help establish a prioritization of optimization benchmarks for future research. While much optimization research to date has focused on structural steel systems, this presentation will consider both reinforced concrete as well as structural steel systems.