professor ben schafer's thin-walled structures research group - johns hopkins university

Optimization of Cold-Formed Steel Members

This page is under construction - our group is working on many avenues related to optimizing cold-formed steel members - please come back for more information in the future.

Our research team has been investigating the use of advanced optimization techniques that incorporate the Direct Strength Method and hence the finite strip method into the objective function evaluation.

The work began with Hopkins undergraduate student Sam Phillips in 2002 using GA and EA methods. In addition recent work has been conducted with Hopkins graduate student Haoyang Liu. We have had success with the application of Genetic Algorithms and Knowledge-based Optimization Techniques.

For more on GA in structural engineering see Chris Foley's web site at Marquette.

References

For example, see

Liu, H., Igusa, T., Schafer, B.W. (2004). “Knowledge-Based Global Optimization of Cold-Formed Steel Columns.” Elsevier, Thin-walled Structures Journal. 42 (6) 785-801 (doi:10.1016/j.tws.2004.01.001)

For additional publications see the general publications list

last edited on 10/18/06