Optimum design of FRP box-girder bridges

Light weight superstructure is beneficial for bridges in remote areas and in emergency erection. In such weight sensitive applications, combination of fibre reinforced plastics (FRP) as material and box-girders as a structural system have great scope. This combination offers various options to tailor structure and its elements but this flexibility poses greater challenge in optimum design. In this paper a procedure is derived for a generalised optimum design of FRP box-girder bridges, using genetic algorithms (GA). The formulation of the optimum design problem in the form of objective function and constraints is presented. Size, configuration and topology optimization are done simultaneously. A few optimum design studies are carried out to check the performance of the developed procedure and to get trends in the optimum design which will be helpful to the new designers.