Analysis of design variables of prestressed concrete structures using optimization algorithms

During recent years more and more emphasis has been put on saving and ecological aspects of the civil engineering industry. As the total volume of concrete being produced on our planet is immense (ca 1010 tons per year), the possibility of decreasing it by even a small percentage can bring large savings in material costs, transport and other costs and reduction of CO2 production and other pollution. Therefore, optimal analysis of design variables of concrete structures appears to be of high importance. Optimization is finding the best solution to a given problem. Many disciplines define different optimization problems and it is typically the minimum or maximum value of the objective function that is searched. It is known that mathematical procedures and algorithms to find an optimal structural design are used in practice in mechanical engineering, but the use of these tools in civil engineering is rather exceptional. Generally, scientific works deal with the optimal design of structures only. Finding of an optimal shape and dimensions is usually a question of the engineer’s experience and good “guess”, which is then verified by calculation. There are many reasons explaining why optimization in common practise is used only occasionally. One of them is the absence of proper user friendly software tools which could help within relatively short time available for structural design. Another reason is the complexity of optimization tasks as well as a lot of constraints in civil engineering design codes. Last but not least, the change of design variables of buildings, bridges and structures of special types do not express regular response. This issue is discussed in the submitted work