This paper presents results of a demolition survey in a major North American city that captured building age, building type, structural material and reason for demolition for 227 buildings. The findings challenge many common assumptions about building longevity, and, in particular, the relationship between structural material and service life. Although it is often believed that “durable” struct...

This paper presents results of extensive computational experiments in which evolutionary multiobjective algorithms were used to find Pareto-optimal solutions to a complex structural design problem. In particular, Strength-Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) was combined with a mathematical programming method to find optimal designs of steel structural systems in tall buildings with respect ...

The paper discusses a study on the application of intelligent agents (IAs) to conceptual designing. It provides an overview of the state-of-the-art in the areas of ontologies and IAs. Next, the system Disciple, a learning intelligent agent shell, and the system Inventor 2001, evolutionary design support tool, both developed at George Mason University, are briefly presented. Further, the paper i...

There exists a need for blast resistant yet portable buildings to protect personnel temporarily assigned duties within explosively hazardous areas. Blast resistant portable buildings (BRPBs) are a valuable asset for protection of temporarily assigned personnel involved in activities located near potential explosion sites. Portable. Stackable and modular. Blast designed and ductile. Several comp...

A case study of retrofitting a 20-story pre-Northridge steel moment-frame building is presented. Twelve retrofit 4 schemes are developed with varying degrees of intervention. Three retrofitting techniques are considered: up5 grading the brittle beam-to-column moment resisting connections, and implementing either conventional or 6 buckling-restrained brace elements within the existing moment-fra...

response modification factor (r-factor) is one of the seismic design parameters to consider nonlinear performance of building structures during strong earthquake. relying on this, many seismic design codes led to reduce earthquake loads imposed to the structure. the present paper tries to evaluate the r-factors of conventional concentric braced frames (cbfs) and special moment frames (mrfs) in ...