Despite the development of advanced methods, models, and algorithms, optimization within structural engineering remains a primary method for overcoming potential structural failures. With the overarching goal to improve capacity, limit structural damage, and assess the structural dynamic response, further improvements to these methods must be entertained. Optimization of Design for Better Structural Capacity is an essential reference source that discusses the advancement and augmentation of optimization designs for better behavior of structure under different types of loads, as well as the use of these advanced designs in combination with other methods in civil engineering. Featuring research on topics such as industrial software, geotechnical engineering, and systems optimization, this book is ideally designed for architects, professionals, researchers, engineers, and academicians seeking coverage on advanced designs for use in civil engineering environments.

Performance-Based Optimization of Structures introduces a method to bridge the gap between structural optimization theory and its practical application to structural engineering. The Performance-Based Optimization (PBO) method combines modern structural optimisation theory with performance based design concepts to produce a powerful technique for use in structural design. This book provides the latest PBO techniques for achieving optimal topologies and shapes of continuum structures with stress, displacement and mean compliance constraints. The emphasis is strongly placed on practical applications of automated PBO techniques to the strut-and-tie modelling of structural concrete, which includes reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. Basic concepts underlying the development of strut-and-lie models, design optimization procedure, and detailing of structural concrete are described in detail. Alternative approaches to topology optimization are also introduced. The book contains numerous practical design examples illustrating the nature of the load transfer mechanism of structures.

Civil engineering structures such as buildings, bridges, stadiums, and offshore structures play an import role in our daily life. However, constructing these structures requires lots of budget. Thus, how to cost-efficiently design structures satisfying all required design constraints is an important factor to structural engineers. Traditionally, mathematical gradient-based optimal techniques have been applied to the design of optimal structures. While, many practical engineering optimal problems are very complex and hard to solve by traditional method. In the past few decades, swarm intelligence algorithms, which were inspired by the social behaviour of natural animals such as fish schooling and bird flocking, were developed because they do not require conventional mathematical assumptions and thus possess better global search abilities than the traditional optimization algorithms and have attracted more and more attention. These intelligent based algorithms are very suitable for continuous and discrete design variable problems such as ready-made structural members and have been vigorously applied to various structural design problems and obtained good results. This book gathers the authors’ latest research work related with particle swarm optimizer algorithm and group search optimizer algorithm as well as their application to structural optimal design. The readers can understand the full spectrum of the algorithms and apply the algorithms to their own research problems.

Optimization methods are perceived to be at the heart of computer methods for designing engineering systems. With these optimization methods, the designer can evaluate more alternatives, resulting in a better and more cost-effective design. This guide describes the use of modern optimization methods with simple yet meaningful structural design examples. Optimum solutions are obtained and, where possible, compared with the solutions obtained using traditional design procedures.

A typical engineering task during the development of any system is, among others, to improve its performance in terms of cost and response. Improvements can be achieved either by simply using design rules based on the experience or in an automated way by using optimization methods that lead to optimum designs. Design Optimization of Active and Passive Structural Control Systems includes Earthquake Engineering and Tuned Mass Damper research topics into a volume taking advantage of the connecting link between them, which is optimization. This is a publication addressing the design optimization of active and passive control systems. This title is perfect for engineers, professionals, professors, and students alike, providing cutting edge research and applications.

This book engages in an ongoing topic, such as the implementation of nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, with a main concentration on optimization problems in different fields of engineering optimization applications. The chapters of the book provide concise overviews of various nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, defining their profits in obtaining the optimal solutions of tiresome engineering design problems that cannot be efficiently resolved via conventional mathematical-based techniques. Thus, the chapters report on advanced studies on the applications of not only the traditional, but also the contemporary certain nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms to specific engineering optimization problems with single and multi-objectives. Harmony search, artificial bee colony, teaching learning-based optimization, electrostatic discharge, grasshopper, backtracking search, and interactive search are just some of the methods exhibited and consulted step by step in application contexts. The book is a perfect guide for graduate students, researchers, academicians, and professionals willing to use metaheuristic algorithms in engineering optimization applications.

Collection of selected, peer reviewed papers from the 4th International Conference on Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering (ADME 2014), July 26-27, 2014, Hangzhou, China. The 423 papers are grouped as follows: Chapter 1: Applied Engineering in Area of Heat, Fluid, Acoustic, Flow and Fields, Chapter 2: Design and Systems Dynamics in Mechanical Engineering, Chapter 3: Mechanical Strength, Reliability, Risk Analysis and Assessment, Chapter 4: CAD / CAM / CAE in Design and Engineering Research, Chapter 5: Measurement Technology, Instruments and Sensors, Detection Technologies and Methodologies, Chapter 6: Machine Vision Technology, Image and Video Processing, Chapter 7: Embedded Systems, Electronics, Circuit Technology, Electrics, Electromagnetics, Power Engineering and Communication, Chapter 8: Mechatronics, Industrial Robots, Automation and Control Technologies, Chapter 9: Computer Applications and Mathematical Modeling, Intelligent Algorithms and Optimization, Chapter 10: Green Supply Chain and the Internet of Things Development, Chapter 11: Industrial Engineering, Production Management, Operations, Quality and Control, Chapter 12: Engineering Education

This volume comprises papers presented at the China-US Millennium Symposium on Earthquake Engineering, held in Beijing, China, on November 8-11, 2000. This conference provides a forum for advancing the field of earthquake engineering through multi-lateral cooperation.