TY - JOUR
T1 - Regularity and optimisation practice in steel structural frames in real design cases
AU - Dunant, Cyrille F.
AU - Drewniok, Michał P.
AU - Eleftheriadis, Stathis
AU - Cullen, Jonathan M.
AU - Allwood, Julian M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to warmly thank Price & Myers for their invaluable help in this analysis and their expertise. This work was supported by Innovate UK project ‘Innovative engineering approach for material, carbon and cost efficiency of steel buildings’ ref. 102477; epsrc Material demand reduction: NMZL/112, RG82144, epsrc reference: EP/N02351X/1. Appendix A
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s)
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/7/31
Y1 - 2018/7/31
N2 - Large amounts of energy and carbon are embodied in the frames of buildings, making efficient structural design a key aspect of reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. Similarly to a previous study which analysed real structures had observed that the unused mass of steel framed building could amount to nearly 46% of the total mass due to over-specification of the sections, we find a value of 36%. We observe that this value correlates with the design method, with software-aided design bringing significant improvements and with the design stage, where most of the optimisation seems to occur between the preliminary and tender stage. We find that neither the regularity of the structure nor the cost, independent of the measure used, correlate with the mean utilisation ratio (UR). Conversely, we observe an apparent reluctance to design beams above a 0.8 capacity UR. This reluctance explains most of the unused mass in buildings. The rest of unused mass consists in cores, trimmers and ties (6%), some of which bear loads not captured in this analysis but are otherwise necessary for stability reasons, and in edge secondary beams (3%) which design is constrained, and should not necessarily be considered as ‘unused’ mass.
AB - Large amounts of energy and carbon are embodied in the frames of buildings, making efficient structural design a key aspect of reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. Similarly to a previous study which analysed real structures had observed that the unused mass of steel framed building could amount to nearly 46% of the total mass due to over-specification of the sections, we find a value of 36%. We observe that this value correlates with the design method, with software-aided design bringing significant improvements and with the design stage, where most of the optimisation seems to occur between the preliminary and tender stage. We find that neither the regularity of the structure nor the cost, independent of the measure used, correlate with the mean utilisation ratio (UR). Conversely, we observe an apparent reluctance to design beams above a 0.8 capacity UR. This reluctance explains most of the unused mass in buildings. The rest of unused mass consists in cores, trimmers and ties (6%), some of which bear loads not captured in this analysis but are otherwise necessary for stability reasons, and in edge secondary beams (3%) which design is constrained, and should not necessarily be considered as ‘unused’ mass.
KW - Design
KW - Design practice
KW - Efficiency
KW - Optimisation
KW - Regularity
KW - Steel frames
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043596214&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.01.009
DO - 10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.01.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85043596214
VL - 134
SP - 294
EP - 302
JO - Resources, Conservation and Recycling
JF - Resources, Conservation and Recycling
SN - 0921-3449
ER -