This study extends the Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) method for
application to multi-storey buildings. The objective is to find the optimal
topologies of multi-storey buildings subject to overall stiffness or displacement
constraints. It emphasizes the derivation of a methodology to help the structural
designers to choose the optimal topology among many topologies that are
generated during the evolutionary optimization process. Other problems of the
ESO method such as the termination condition, sharp change in structural mean
compliance or constrained displacements are also investigated.
The new added features provide the ESO method with the capability of dealing
with structures containing different types of finite elements. For the structure
being considered, only continuum elements are allowed to be removed during
the optimization process while beam elements are assumed to be fixed and are
referred to as a non-design domain. By having all the topologies with the same
weight as the initial structure, the performance of these topologies can be
evaluated by comparing the mean compliance or constrained displacements.
The results of this study show the extended ESO method can effectively find
efficient bracing systems for multi-storey buildings.