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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 60
OPTIMIZATION AND CONTROL IN CIVIL AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping and B. Kumar
Paper II.1

An Application of Simulated Annealing to the Optimum Design of Reinforced Concrete Retaining Structures

B. Ceranic, C. Fryer and R.W. Baines

School of Engineering, University of Derby, England

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
B. Ceranic, C. Fryer, R.W. Baines, "An Application of Simulated Annealing to the Optimum Design of Reinforced Concrete Retaining Structures", in B.H.V. Topping, B. Kumar, (Editors), "Optimization and Control in Civil and Structural Engineering", Civil-Comp Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp 47-53, 1999. doi:10.4203/ccp.60.2.1
Abstract
This paper reports on the application of a simulated annealing algorithm to the minimum cost design of reinforced concrete retaining structures. Cantilever retaining walls are investigated, being representative of reinforced concrete retaining structures that are required to resist a combination of earth and hydrostatic loading. To solve the resulting optimisation problem a modified simulated annealing algorithm is proposed that avoids the simple rejection of infeasible solutions and improves convergence to a minimum cost. The algorithm is implemented using an object orientated visual programming language, offering facilities for continual monitoring, assessing and changing of the current state of the simulated annealing control parameters. Results obtained so far have shown that simulated annealing can be successfully applied to the minimum cost design of reinforced concrete retaining walls, overcoming the difficulties associated with the practical and realistic assessment of the structural costs and their complex inter-relationship with the imposed constraints on the solution space.

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