Optimization of Reinforced Concrete Sections under Compression and Biaxial Bending by Using a Parallel Firefly Algorithm

A simple formulation for the optimal design of reinforced concrete sections under compression and biaxial bending was established in a previous work by the authors. In that work, it was found that the formulation produced satisfactory results when used together with three algorithms that belong to the nature-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm group. However, despite the favorable results obtained, the necessary calculation times were extensive in all the cases. In order to solve this problem, the authors implemented a parallel calculation strategy in the algorithm that gave better results in the previous work. It was possible to verify, through two examples, that this strategy reduces calculation times as more processes are used in parallel, and that the adjustments made in the algorithm favor reaching designs close to the global optimum independently of the number of parallel processes adopted.