Abstract
This paper deals with a postgraduate course in project engineering that forms part of an MSc course in Concrete Engineering at the UPV. This course is focused on the automated design of concrete structures optimizing the material execution cost. The course is concerned first with the basic heuristic algorithms for structural optimization, such as genetic algorithms, ant colonies, simulated annealing, particle swarm optimization, neural networks, etc. And it then moves to the application of such algorithms to the practical design of real concrete structures such as walls, road portal and box frames, building frames, vaults, bridge piers, abutments and decks. Two design cases are presented. Simulated annealing (SA) is firstly applied to a cantilever wall of 10 m high. This example has 20 discrete design variables for the geometry as well as for the characteristics of the materials, and passive reinforcement. The second type of structure analyzed is a 10 m high counterfort retaining wall. This example has 32 variables for its definition. The parameters are the same in both cases. Finally, case studies indicate that the heuristic optimization is a forthcoming tool to design a variety of different types of retaining walls and compare them, reducing costs.
