Structural Optimization in Civil Engineering: A Literature Review

Abstract

Since tremendous resources are consumed in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, the sustainability and efficiency in this field have received increasing concern in the past few decades. With the advent and development of computational tools and information technologies, structural optimization based on mathematical computation has become one of the most commonly used methods for the sustainable and efficient design in the field of civil engineering. However, despite the wide attention of researchers, there has not been a critical review of the recent research progresses on structural optimization yet. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to comprehensively review the previous research on structural optimization, provide a thorough analysis on the optimization objectives and their temporal and spatial trends, optimization process, and summarize the current research limitations and recommendations of future work. The paper first introduces the significance of sustainability and efficiency in the AEC industry as well as the background of this review work. Then, relevant articles are retrieved and selected, followed by a statistical analysis of the selected articles. Thereafter, the selected articles are analyzed regarding the optimization objectives and their temporal and spatial trends. The four major steps in the structural optimization process, including structural analysis and modelling, formulation of optimization problems, optimization techniques, and computational tools and design platforms, are also reviewed and discussed in detail based on the collected articles. Finally, research gaps of the current works and potential directions of future works are proposed. This paper critically reviews the achievements and limitations of the current research on structural optimization, which provide guidelines for future research on structural optimization in the field of civil engineering.

Artificial Intelligence and Optimisation Techniques for Risk Reduction in Civil Engineering

“…trends in AI in the past 15 years has been the integration of optimization methods throughout the field" (p.5). More specifically, in the field of civil engineering, optimisation can be executed in each step of a project life cycle, from design and construction to operation and maintenance, but can also be applied more generally to risk estimation and reduction (Dede et al, 2019;Mei & Wang, 2021).…”

Multi‐objective optimization of mechanically stabilized earth retaining wall using evolutionary algorithms

“…F I G U R E 2 Three possible failure modes for external stability of the MSE wall 45 The horizontal inertial force P IR is 𝑃 𝐼𝑅 = 0.5𝑘 ℎ 𝑊 𝑟 (7) where W r is the weight of the reinforced soil zone (kN/m)…”

“…[4][5][6] Metaheuristic algorithms have been effective in solving highly complex engineering problems. A wide variety of successful applications of optimization algorithms can be found in civil engineering, including in structural engineering, [6][7][8] water engineering, geotechnical engineering, transportation engineering, 4,5,[9][10][11] and construction management. 12,13 Although there are numerous studies on different applications of metaheuristics, the effort of applying new algorithms to those problems is consistent.…”

Discrete Optimum Design of Planar Steel Curved Roof and Pitched Roof Portal Frames Using Metaheuristic Algorithms

“…Algorithm of the Innovative Gunner (AIG) [9], Artificial Electric Field Algorithm (AEFA) [10], and Quantum Henry Gas Solubility (QHGS) [11] are examples of the recently developed metaheuristics. Metaheuristics as probabilistic solvers have been applied and developed for solving optimization problems in the field of civil engineering, such as structural optimization [12,13], damage detection [14,15], optimal design of retaining wall [16,17], etc. Motivated by the potential application of metaheuristics, this study attempts to apply some population-based metaheuristics for the optimal design of the curved roof and pitched roof portal frames.…”

“…Fig 12. The final structural weight in each independent run for the steel CRF of the second design example obtained by (a) TLBO, (b) ECBO, (c) SSOA, and (d) WSA…”