Keywords: hollow section, optimization, steel. .

Structural hollow sections have good bending and torsional resistance and stiffness as well as a small envelope area compared to open sections thus requiring considerably less surface treatment. Nowadays the closed metal profiles available are basically circular or rectangular. This paper shows that beside these shapes there could be other possibilities. For finding other shapes mathematical optimization techniques are used.

In this optimization approach, the profile shape is formed of straight lines forming a closed profile. The constraints are formed from the Eurocode based resistance checks with different load combinations with respect to axial, shear and moment cross-section resistance and flexural buckling. The criterion in optimization is the cross-sectional area which is minimized. Special attention in this paper is devoted to find the shapes where constraints are presented for some parts of the cross-section.

A set of different optimization problems is considered. The test cases include verifications with cases where analytic exact solutions are available, e.g. circle and ellipse. Many cases for biaxial bending, bending and axial compression with flexural buckling in one and two directions are considered. Results imply that shapes better than the existing ones can be found.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £65 +P&P)