COST OPTIMIZATION OF CASTELLATED BEAMS USING CHARGED SYSTEM SEARCH ALGORITHM

Castellated beam is formed by modifying a standard rolled beam through creating a
regular pattern of holes in the web. The main goal of manufacturing these beams is to increase the
moment of inertia and section modulus, which results in greater strength and rigidity. In this study,
the charged system search algorithm is used for obtaining the solution of the design problem. Here,
castellated beams with hexagonal and circular openings are considered as design problems. The
minimum cost is taken as the design objective function. The design methods used in this study are
consistent with BS5950 part 1 and 3 and Euro code 3. A number of design examples are
considered to demonstrate the efficiency of the presented algorithm. It is observed that
optimization results obtained by the ECSS algorithm for three castellated beams with hexagonal
openings have less cost in comparison to the cellular beams. Also, the results of these examples
illustrate the capability of the ECSS algorithm in finding the optimum solution in less number of
iterations.