Learning from Ant Society in Optimizing Concrete Retaining Walls

 In the present paper, lessons are learnt from ant society so that humankind can optimize his engineering issues. As an example of such issues, a reinforced concrete retaining wall for which the application of optimization can reduce the costs involved is considered. Traditional design procedure for reinforced concrete retaining walls is unable to design an optimized wall unless a large trial effort is undertaken. This paper introduces a learning procedure from ants, which is a general search technique for the solution of difficult combinatorial problems with its theoretical roots based on the foraging behavior of ants. This methodology arrives at an optimal design for concrete retaining walls due to its capability to explore and exploit the solution space effectively. The basis of analysis in this paper is to determine the minimum weight and costs in the design of concrete retaining walls following a computation of lateral total thrust on the wall due to backfill pressures, bearing capacity consideration, settlement analysis, stability analysis, and application of design of reinforced concrete principles. The results clearly indicate that ant colony can educate engineers comprehensively to reach a minimum cost justified retaining wall through an optimization approach.