Optimum Design of Reinforced Concrete Beams

The design of reinforced concrete (RC) beams need special conditions to provide a ductile design. In this design, the maximum amount of tensile reinforcement must be limited to singly reinforced design. After the singly reinforced limit, the cost of doubly reinforced RC beam rapidly increases, and it may not be an optimum design. To consider this nonlinear behavior and other rules used in RC structures according to regulations such as ACI 318: Building code requirements for structural concrete and Eurocode 2: Design of concrete structures, an algorithmic and iteration optimization method is needed. In this chapter, two examples are presented, and optimum results are shared for methodologies employing several metaheuristic algorithms. The importance of using metaheuristic algorithms can be seen in this chapter.