New method of optimal selection of welded steel I-beams considering technological and production constraints

Optimization of steel structures is an actual problem in construction. During the full-scale war unleashed by russia against Ukraine, lean design is an urgent need, in particular for critical national infrastructure protection tasks. A new algorithmic optimization method is proposed, which is called the directed selection method, and is a modification of the exhaustive search method. The proposed method takes into account production, technological and constructive constraints. The implementation of the method is shown on the example of finding the optimal solution for I-beams composed of steel sheets. Practical solutions to the problem of optimal selection of structures for engineering protection of critical national infrastructure facilities have shown the cost-effectiveness of the resulting steel I-beam sections compared to existing methods. The main advantages of the proposed method are the guaranteed accessibility to the global optimum rather than local optima and the absence of the need to rework the obtained sections for real design and construction conditions, since these conditions are already accounted for by constraints that reduce the feasible solution region.