Two multi-objectives optimization procedures for civil steel frame design are presented. In civil engineering industry, the design optimization of structural components is often obtained through traditional methods based on a “library” approach, which focus on the optimization of the material and dimensions of the structural elements, overlooking their location.
This work is to provides two different alternative procedures to optimize not only the dimension of the elements, but also their position within a prototype of a steel frame structure whose goals are user-defined. The FE modelling is realized using only beam elements and joint connections.
The integration of the CivilFEM and Ansys with modeFRONTIER allows the software to work in synergy in a semi-automatic process, to generate the optimized configuration of the civil design and to check it according to standard codes.