An Optimality Criteria Design Method for Tall Steel Buildings

An efficient computer-based method is developed for the optimum design of tall steel building frameworks. Specifically, an optimality criteria method is applied to minimize the weight of a lateral load-resisting structural system of fixed topology subject to constraints on overall and interstorey drift. By exploiting the fact for building frameworks that member forces are relatively insensitive to changes in member sizes, rigorously-derived optimality criteria are shown to be readily satisfied through an iterative redesign procedure that converges in but a few cycles. A steel framework example is presented from a variety of viewpoints to illustrate the features of the design optimization method

Alternative Methods for the Optimal Design of Slender Steel Frameworks

A mathematical programming (MP) method and an optimality criteria (OC) method are alternatively applied for the design of tall slender steel frameworks. For both cases, the design objective is to minimize the weight of the lateral load-resisting structural system of given topology subject to constraints on interstorey drift. The MP and OC solution algorithms are first described, and then both methods are applied for the minimum-weight design of a range of steel frameworks having differing numbers of storeys