Raphael T. Haftka and Zafer Gürdal, M. P. Kamat ...
402 pages - Publisher: Springer; 2nd (1990) edition (February 6, 2013)
Language: English - ISBN-10: 9401578648 - ISBN-13: 978-9401578646
The field of structural optimization is still a relatively new field
undergoing rapid changes in methods and focus. Until recently there was a
severe imbalance between the enormous amount of literature on the
subject, and the paucity of applications to practical design problems.
This imbalance is being gradually redressed now. There is still no
shortage of new publications, but there are also exciting applications
of the methods of structural optimizations in the automotive, aerospace,
civil engineering, machine design and other engineering fields. As a
result of the growing pace of applications, research into structural
optimization methods is increasingly driven by real-life problems. Most
engineers who design structures employ complex general-purpose software
packages for structural analysis. Often they do not have any access to
the source the details of program, and even more frequently they have
only scant knowledge of the structural analysis algorithms used in this
software packages. Therefore the major challenge faced by researchers in
structural optimization is to develop methods that are suitable for use
with such software packages. Another major challenge is the high
computational cost associated with the analysis of many complex
real-life problems. In many cases the engineer who has the task of
designing a structure cannot afford to analyze it more than a handful of
times.