Minimum cost design of RCMRFs based on consistent approximation method

In this paper, a procedure for automated optimized design of reinforced concrete frames has been presented. The procedure consists of formulation and solution of the design problem in the form of an optimization problem. The minimization of total cost of R/C frame has been taken as the objective of optimization problem. In this research, consistent approximation method is applied to explicitly formulate constraints and objective function in terms of the design variables. In the presented method, the primary optimization problem is replaced with a sequence of explicit sub-problems. Each sub-problem is efficiently solved using the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method. The proposed method is demonstrated through a four-story frame and an eight-story frame, and the optimum results are compared with those in the available literature. It is shown that the proposed method can be easily applied to obtain rational, reliable, economical and practical designs for Reinforced Concrete Moment Resisting Frames (RCMRFs) while it is converged after a few analyses.