Collection

Special Issue on Design Optimization and Applications in Civil Engineering

Submission status
Closed

Many design optimization problems in civil engineering are highly nonlinear subject to stringent, complex constraints. Thus, sophisticated optimization methods are needed to find solutions to such challenging optimization problems. One of the main goals of a civil engineer is to find a balanced design in terms of economy, performance, sustainability, security and practicality. Nowadays, optimization is an active research area with an increasing number of publications and interests, and researchers usually try to find better solutions than the previous existing solutions to the same type of problems in the literature. In most research activities, researchers may develop new approaches to solve existing challenging problems or try to explore new design topics by using appropriate design methods.

The applications of design optimization are very diverse in engineering, including distribution and storage of water resources, designs and construction of superstructures and infrastructures, transport systems and traffic management, geotechnical engineering such as tunnelling and stabilization of soil backfills, protection and management of natural disasters, structure safety and integrity, optimal use of resources and many others. In industry, it is always desirable to design products with enhanced performance, reduced costs, higher energy efficiency and less environmental impact. In addition, designs in engineering often are subject to stringent design codes or regulations. Though optimal designs should be sought in principle and as much as in practice, it is not always achievable due to various additional constraints such as uncertainties in material properties and manufacturability.

The initial motivation of this Special Issue of the KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering is to provide a timely review of the latest developments concerning novel optimization methods and new applications in civil engineering. The focus will be on novel approaches, new methods, new design applications and cross-disciplinary applications. The responses were overwhelming with more than 80 high quality submissions. Due to the limitation of the space in a single issue, many high-quality papers cannot be included here. Even so, it is hoped that this special issue can still provide a snapshot of this area, even though it is can only represent a small fraction of the latest developments.

We would like to thank all of those who have contributed to this special issue. We also would like to thank all the reviewers for their time and valuable comments. Special thanks to Prof. Ho-Kyung Kim, the Editor-in-Chief, and Prof. Jieun Park, Assistant Manager of the Journal, as well as the staff at the Editorial Office for their help and professionalism.

Editors

Articles (7 in this collection)