Multihazard Design: Structural Optimization Approach

The objective of multihazard structural engineering is to develop methodologies for achieving designs that are safe and cost-effective under multiple hazards. Optimization is a natural tool for achieving such designs. In general, its aim is to determine a vector of design variables subjected to a given set of constraints, such that an objective function of those variables is minimized. In the particular case of structural design, the design variables may be member sizes; the constraints pertain to structural strength and serviceability (e.g., keeping the load-induced stresses and deflections below specified thresholds); and the objective function is the structure cost or weight. In a multihazard context, the design variables are subjected to the constraints imposed by all the hazards to which the structure is exposed. In this paper, we formulate the multihazard structural design problem in nonlinear programming terms and present a simple illustrative example involving four design variables and two hazards: earthquake and strong winds. Results of our numerical experiments show that interior-point methods are significantly more efficient than classical optimization methods in solving the nonlinear programming problem associated with our illustrative example.