TY - JOUR A1 - Sánchez Olivares, Gregorio AU - Tomás Espín, Antonio T1 - Improvements in meta-heuristic algorithms for minimum cost design of reinforced concrete rectangular sections under compression and biaxial bending Y1 - 2017 SN - 0141-0296 UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10317/8493 AB - A numerical procedure is proposed in this paper for achieving the minimum cost design of reinforced concrete rectangular sections under compression and biaxial bending by using biologically-inspired meta-heuristic optimization algorithms. The problem formulation includes the costs of concrete, reinforcement and formwork, obtaining the detailed optimum design in which the section dimensions and the reinforcement correspond to values used in practice. The formulation has been simplified in order to reduce the computational cost while ensuring the rigor necessary to achieve safe designs. The numerical procedure includes the possibility of using high-strength concrete and several design constraints, such as mínimum reinforcement and limiting the neutral axis depth. Two numerical examples are presented, drawing comparisons between the results obtained by ACI318 and EC2 standards. KW - Ingeniería de la Construcción KW - Optimization KW - Meta-heuristic algorithms KW - Reinforced concrete structures KW - Cross section dimensioning KW - Biaxial bending KW - 3305.05 Tecnología del Hormigón LA - eng PB - Elsevier ER -