Towards Ubiquitous Structural Frame Design Tools

A collection of methods and algorithms are presented which aim to aid in the automatic designing of steel structural frames, under both deflection and stress criteria. A virtual work method is utilised assessing local contributions of members to global nodal deflections. It is the invention of the authors to apply these methods iteratively to indeterminate structures. Complementary algorithms which design members for stress have also been devised following Evolutionary Structural Optimisation principles. In this way an optimisation suite has been developed which can be used systematically to design structural frames. It has been found practically that this method converges on a low weight solution, with designs found much more expediently in comparison to typical beam selection methods. The implementation of these advancements in the form of useable tools for

application by non-specialists is discussed. Finally possible directions for further work are proposed.