Optimal Design of Steel-Concrete Composite I-girder Bridges Using Three Meta-Heuristic Algorithms

Bridges are among very important structures in engineering, due to their rather high cost, and this is why optimization of these structures is a challenging problem. In this paper, optimal design of steel-concrete composite I-girder bridges is performed. Three recently developed meta-heuristic algorithms consisting of Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO), Enhanced Colliding Bodies Optimization (ECBO) and Vibration Particle System (VPS) are utilized for the first time in the optimal design of steel-concrete I-girder bridges. Both continuous and discrete variables are utilized in the process of optimization. Performance and the convergence histories of these algorithms are compared. In order to have a suitable comparison between these algorithms with previous algorithms, PSO is used and results are displayed. This paper focuses on cost optimization the bridges. Furthermore constraints include all of requirements of the code of practice for design. The comparative study has shown that VPS algorithm has better performance than CBO and ECBO. However, all three algorithms act in a way that the final optimized design does not need the addition of the longitudinal stiffener.