CO2 emissions optimization of reinforced concrete ribbed slab by hybrid metaheuristic optimization algorithm (IDEACO)

This paper presents an optimization of the reinforced concrete ribbed slab in terms of minimum CO2 emissions and an economic justification of the final optimal design. The design variables are six geometry variables including the slab thickness, the ribs spacing, the rib width at the lower and toper end, the depth of the rib and the bar diameter of the reinforcement, and the seventh variable defines the concrete strength. The objective function is considered to be the minimum amount of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) emission and at the same time, the optimal design is economical. Seven significant design constraints of American Concrete Institute's Standard were considered. A robust metaheuristic optimization method called improved dolphin echolocation and ant colony optimization (IDEACO) has been used to obtain the best possible answer. At optimal design, the three most important sources of CO2 emissions include concrete, steel reinforcement, and formwork that the contribution of them are 63.72, 32.17, and 4.11 percent respectively. Formwork, concrete, steel reinforcement, and CO2 are the four most important sources of cost with contributions of 67.56, 19.49, 12.44, and 0.51 percent respectively. Results obtained by IDEACO show that cost and CO2 emissions are closely related, so the presented method is a practical solution that was able to reduce the cost and CO2 emissions simultaneously.