3

NEURAL DYNAMICS MODEL AND ITS APPLICATION

TO ENGINEERING DESIGN OPTIMIZATION

3.1
INTRODUCTION
Solving engineering problems requires that decisions be made reliably and accurately towards the desired
solution. Whether the problem involves design and development, operation and maintenance, or control and
management, decisions must be based on a solid model of the system that serves the purpose of the
solution. This systematic procedure leads to decisions that are consistently reliable and reproducible.
Furthermore, such a procedure can be automated for efficient processing. On the other hand, decisions made
somewhat arbitrarily by engineers are open to personal interpretation and inconsistencies.
Most engineering decisions can be posed as an optimization problem where the maximum or minimum of
an objective is sought that satisfies all the system constraints. Once a problem is modeled mathematically
with objective and constraint functions, mathematical optimization techniques can be used to solve it. Many
optimization algorithms are available; however, their applications have been limited mostly to academic
problems.
The objectives of this chapter are:

To introduce the neural dynamics model of Adeli and Park (1995, 1998) as a general model for the
solution of complex nonlinear optimization problems.
To describe how the neural dynamics model can be adapted to a specific optimization problemin this
case, the minimum weight design of simply supported cold-formed steel beams.
To demonstrate the robustness and practical applicability of the model by presenting parametric studies
for the design of hat-shaped cold-formed steel beams.

3.2
COLD-FORMED STEEL DESIGN OPTIMIZATION
An important advantage of cold-formed steel is the greater flexibility of cross-sectional shapes and sizes
available to the structural steel designer. Through cold-forming operations, steel sheets, strips or plates can
easily be shaped and sized to meet a large variety of design options. Such a large number of design
possibilities creates an important challenge: How to choose the most economical cold-formed shape in
design of steel structures.
A search of structural engineering and computing journals up to 1996 turned out only one journal article
on the optimization of cold-formed steel structures. Seaburg and Salmon (1971) used the direct and gradient