Cost optimal design of 3-D steel building frames using CA-LFSR

This work introduces coupled cellular automata (CA) and LFSR (CA-LFSR) machine, defined in Galois extension field (GF(2
^p
)), for the cost optimal design of 3-D steel building frames. Tall steel building frames are subjected to substantially high lateral forces due to wind and/or earthquake, in addition to the usual dead and live loads. The cost of construction of such frames can be reduced by providing additional structural steel members, called bracings, between suitable pairs of nodes of the building. The patterns generated from a CA-LFSR, tuned to the structural configuration of a building, dictates the desired positions of bracings resulting in a structure with reduced construction cost. The cost optimal design developed around the CA-LFSR is reached in constant time that is possible with the conventional design procedure based on the principles of structural engineering. Exhaustive experimentation establish that the proposed CA-LFSR based approach is most effective for the design of tall building frames, and can reuse a design for scalability.