Name: MAYANE CORDEIRO LOUREIRO
Publication date: 14/02/2023
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ADENILCIA FERNANDA GROBERIO CALENZANI | Presidente |
| ELCIO CASSIMIRO ALVES | Coorientador |
| JOÃO BATISTA MARQUES DE SOUSA JUNIOR | Examinador Externo |
| LUCIANO RODRIGUES ORNELAS DE LIMA | Examinador Externo |
Summary: The use of steel formwork incorporated into composite steel-concrete slabs stands out
for contributing to sustainable development in civil construction. However, this
construction system still has limited usage in Brazil, which may be due to the restricted
availability of formwork geometries in the national market. As such, this study aims to
determine the optimal steel geometry that results in the lowest steel consumption
during manufacture of the composite slabs, taking into consideration the initial
construction phase, in which the formwork is under the highest load demand. The
Direct Strength Method (DSM) and the traditional Effective Width Method (EWM) are
applied for designing the steel formwork during the construction phase, where the cold-
formed steel profile resists the applied forces independently. For DSM, the critical
buckling moments are determined using the elastic stability analysis program CUFSM,
via Finite Strip Methods. The solution of the optimization problem was implemented in
MATLAB® using Particle Swarm Optimization and considering two design variables:
the thickness and the bend angle of the formwork web. In addition, the proposed
formulation was evaluated in the implementation phase of DSM and EWM. Numerical
analyses are carried out on four different steel geometries currently available in the
Brazilian market. The main results showed that the developed computational program
was successful in finding optimal solutions for said geometries, as the optimization
reduced steel consumption by an average of 21.6%. Thickness had a greater effect on
the steel savings, and this variable decreases in the optimal solution, while the height
and bend angle increase.
