ENHANCED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION WITH A DIRECT CONSTRAINTS HANDLING STRATEGY FOR OPTIMAL DESIGN OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES

In this paper an enhanced ant colony optimization algorithm with a direct constraints handling strategy is proposed for the optimization of reinforced concrete frames. The construction cost of reinforced concrete frames is considered as the objective function, which should be minimized subject to geometrical and behavioral strength constraints. For this purpose, a new probabilistic function is added to the ant colony optimization algorithm to directly satisfy the geometrical constraints. Furthermore, the position of an ant in each iteration is updated if a better solution is found in terms of objective value and behavioral strength constraints satisfaction. Five benchmark design examples of planar reinforced concrete frames are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.