An optimal barrel vault design in the conceptual design stage

The geometry plays a key role in the structural behaviour of shell structures. Finding the optimal shell geometry is therefore of crucial importance. Structural optimization is well fit to reach this goal. In this paper, structural optimization is used as a design tool during the design of a barrel vault. Based on constructional requirements, a shape for the barrel vault is proposed. Initially, the shape is considered to be fixed and a size optimization is performed to obtain the optimal design. However, if a quadratical variation of the shell thickness is assumed, the volume of the considered barrel vault can be reduced with 7%. Alternatively, if the shell radius is added as a design variable, a volume reduction of 28% is obtained for this example. These results demonstrate that the choice of the design variables and the parametrization strongly influence the resulting optimal design. Moreover, structural optimization gives the design team the opportunity to evaluate a number of design options in terms of material use. This evaluation extends the available information in the conceptual design stage and allows to make a trade-off between aesthetical arguments, constructional requirements and the possibilities for the reduction of material use.

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