OPTIMIZATION
THE ACTION OF MAKING THE BEST
great efforts to obtain the best solution out of a heavily restrained design
Optimization is, by definition, the action of making the best or most effective use of a situation.
For engineering application, this technique required great efforts to obtain the best solution out of a heavily restrained design case to, typically, reduce the total weight of the material and the total cost of the structure.
From an architectural point of view, optimization can provide the best layout or increment the repeatability of a typical module on a façade.
For the client request, optimization can provide an evaluable reduction of the total cost.
CASE STUDY | EL FERDAN BRIDGE
During the design of retrofitting and upgrading on the existing bridge of “El Ferdan” located in the old Suez Canal, a genetic algorithm was used to calculate the best solution from hundreds of variables.
Starting from the existing geometry, an increment of the area was defined for each element of the bridge. The genetic algorithm tested and simulated thousands of different combinations with the final goal of finding the solution with the minimum weight but still satisfying all the structural requirements.
CASE STUDY | MEYDAN ONE MALL
Meydan one mall, a 400 m long skylight cover for an innovative mall in Dubai was carefully optimized to reduce the total cost of glass panels. To obtain these results, several different layouts of glass panel sizes have been studied with the final goal of obtaining a reduction of the waste material and a reduction of the production cost of glazed panels.
CASE STUDY | AL WAKRAH STADIUM
To improve the feasibility of the cladding panels in Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar, an optimization algorithm was defined internally to reduce the “out-of-plane” deformation of aluminum panels.
The algorithm moved all the control points that defined the shape of the external panels to find the correct geometry. Starting with high deformed panels obtained from the architectural shape of the stadium roof, the optimization algorithm made all the thousands of aluminum panels constructible with a minimum tolerance of 10 mm.
