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Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization

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19-02-2020 | Industrial Application Paper

Advancing building engineering through structural and topology optimization

Authors: Tomás Zegard, Christian Hartz, Arek Mazurek, William F. Baker

Published in: Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization | Issue 2/2020

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Abstract

Traditional building design is often done in a (pseudo-) sequential manner: the architect defines the form, the structural engineer defines the material and member dimensions, and the mechanical engineer defines the openings, clearances, and additional spaces that ensure proper operation of the building. The design process should ideally be linear, where each discipline receives a complete design from the previous. In reality, however, upstream revisions are usually substantive: significant work in the schematic design and design development phases are due to resolving upstream issues. That said, within the conceptual design and initial phase, the process is mostly linear. This work presents a set of tools that move towards an integrated design optimization, where the building’s form and structure are optimized together and not as separate stages in the design. This approach often results in a higher impact/gain in efficiency, safety, cost-savings, and ultimately results in innovative designs. This industrial application manuscript provides specific details on the implementation and experience gained from the development of various topology optimization tools for use in building engineering. These are all accompanied by examples of their use in applied building projects or more general structural engineering problems. Part of the success of this effort is attributed to the environment in which these tools are implemented, which is friendly to architects. In contrast, commercial tools for this purpose tend to cater to engineers instead.

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As structures become more extreme (taller, long cantilevers, long spans, etc), the architect is more open to contributions or comments from the structural engineer regarding the building geometry.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM) is an architecture+engineering firm with worldwide presence specializing in the design of super-tall buildings and large complexes, among others. It has a long-standing tradition of innovative and cutting edge designs, and has introduced significant changes to the practice of building engineering throughout its 80 years (at the time of this writing).

Less common approaches assign density variables to the nodes (Matsui and Terada 2004), or to a finer discretization that is nested within the analysis one (Nguyen et al. 2009)

There if ongoing work to obtain analytical clean geometrical descriptions out of density-based topology optimization results. This is often referred to as obtaining a CAD file.

The marching cubes algorithm works with any hexahedra. Hence, a more appropriate name could be marching hexahedra.

The marching squares algorithm works with any quadrangle. Hence, a more appropriate name would be marching quadrangles.

Operations such as and, or, and subtract.

Refer to https://web.ornl.gov/sci/eere/amie/ and https://www.som.com/projects/amie for additional information on the project and all of the involved parties.

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Title: Advancing building engineering through structural and topology optimization
Authors: Tomás Zegard
Christian Hartz
Arek Mazurek
William F. Baker
Publication date: 19-02-2020
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization / Issue 2/2020
Print ISSN: 1615-147X
Electronic ISSN: 1615-1488
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-020-02506-6

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