Optimized Design Of Multi-Story Light-Weight Steel Framwork

As one kind of steel structures, the lightweight steel structure is a new kind of structures that developed in our country in recent years. In our country, the application of multi-story steel structure housing is not broad now, the relevant regulations and examples are also few, and people think the cost is expensive. For this, in this paper, a computer-based method is presented for optimal design of multi-story lightweight framework.Concerned the discrete area of the steel shape, a method is presented: searching the best solution of continual variable first by criteria, and next searching optimal solution by the direct-searching method of mixed variable on the original point of the continual result. The motive is to make the steel volume least, reduce structure cost and speed the promulgation of lightweight steel-structure housing. Member sizes may be chosen form discrete aggregate. The principal idea is to search the discrete optimal solution on the base of the continual optimal solution under meeting every restrict condition.Program designed with C language is used to conduct the optimal process and two numerical examples are calculated using the program. The results show that the number of iteration is small and the convergence process is also stable. This show also the method is suitable to multi-story lightweight steel-structure housing. Furthermore, the flexibility of this method may make it apply in other structures.