10.3 – Cost Optimal Design of Composite Floor Trusses

This paper presents the cost optimization of composite floor trusses. The composite structure was constructed of a reinforced concrete slab and welded steel Pratt trusses consisting of hot rolled channel sections. The structural optimization was carried out by the non-linear programming approach, NLP. An accurate objective function of the manufacturing material, power and labour costs was defined for the optimization. The objective function was subjected to structural analysis constraints. The design constraints were defined according to Eurocode 4 for the conditions of both the ultimate and the serviceability limit states. A numerical example of the optimization of the composite floor trusses presented at the end of the paper shows the advantages of the proposed approach.