Preliminary layout design of buildings has a substantial effect on the ultimate design of structural components and accordingly influences the construction cost. Exploring structurally efficient forms and shapes during the conceptual design stage of a project can also facilitate the optimum integrated design of buildings. This paper presents an automated method of determining column layout desi...

A discrete version of the Charged System Search algorithm (CSS) is developed to optimize truss structures with discrete variables. The discrete CSS algorithm, similar to its original version, is based on some laws from electrostatics and the Newtonian mechanics. Each agent in the CSS is considered as a charged sphere having a uniform volume charge density which can affect an electric force to t...

This study presents shape optimization of a gravity dam imposing stability and principal stress constraints. A gravity dam is a large scale hydraulic structure consisting of huge amount of concrete material. Hence, an optimum design gives a cost-benefit structure due to the fact that small changes in shape of dam cross-section leads to large saving of concrete volume. T...

In recent years, the importance of economical considerations in the field of dam engineering has motivated many researchers to propose new methods for minimizing the cost of dames and in particular arch dams. This paper presents a method for shape optimization of double curvature arch dams corresponding to minimum construction cost while satisfying different constraints such as natural frequenc...

In this paper, a new Hybrid Charged System Search and Particle Swarm Optimization, HCSSPSO, is presented. Although Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has many advantages, including directional search, it has also some disadvantages resulting in slow convergence rate and low performance. On the other hand, the Charged System Search (CSS) is a robust optimization algorithm which has been successfu...

This paper presents application of an improved Harmony Search (HS) technique and Charged System Search algorithm (CSS) to estimate transport energy demand in Iran, based on socio-economic indicators. The models are developed in two forms (exponential and linear) and applied to forecast transport energy demand in Iran. These models are developed to estimate the future energy demands based on pop...

In this paper the recently developed meta-heuristic optimization method, known as charged system search (CSS), is utilized for optimum nodal ordering to minimize bandwidth and profile of sparse matrices. The CSS is an optimization algorithm, which is based on the governing laws of Coulomb and Gauss from electrostatics and the Newtonian mechanics of motion. The bandwidth and profile of some grap...

changes in dynamic properties of structures indicate occurrence of damages in the structures. in this paper, a new two stage algorithm for damage detection of large structure is introduced. a modified residual force method is utilized to locate the damage regions in structures, especially barrel vaults, and then the enhanced charged system search (css) algorithm is used to quantify the amount o...

it is well known that damaged structural members may alter the behaviour of the structures considerably. careful observation of these changes has often been viewed as a means to identify and assess the location and severity of damages in structures. among the responses of a structure, natural frequencies and natural modes are both relatively easy to obtain and independent from external excitati...