Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Steffen Kinzler, Jürgen Grabe

• Geotechnical constructions are sophisticated structures due to the non-linear soil behaviour and the complex soil-structure interaction, which entails great exigencies on the liable engineer during the design process. The process can be schematised as a difficult and, depending on the opportunities and skills of the processor more or less innovative, creative and heuristic search for one or aGeotechnical constructions are sophisticated structures due to the non-linear soil behaviour and the complex soil-structure interaction, which entails great exigencies on the liable engineer during the design process. The process can be schematised as a difficult and, depending on the opportunities and skills of the processor more or less innovative, creative and heuristic search for one or a multiple of defined objectives under given boundary conditions. Wholistic approaches including numerical optimisation which support the constructing engineer in this task do not currently exist. Abstract problem formulation is not state of the art; commonly parameter studies are bounded by computational effort. Thereby potential regarding cost effectiveness, construction time, load capacity and/or serviceability are often used insufficiently. This paper describes systematic approaches for comprehensive optimisation of selected geotechnical constructions like combined pile raft foundations and quay wall structures. Several optimisation paradigms like the mono- and the multi-objective optimisation are demonstrated and their use for a more efficient design concerning various intentions is shown in example. The optimisation is implemented by using Evolutionary Algorithms. The applicability to geotechnical real world problems including nonlinearities, discontinuities and multi-modalities is shown. The routines are adapted to common problems and coupled with conventional analysis procedures as well as with numerical calculation software based on the finite element method. Numerical optimisation of geotechnical design using efficient algorithms is able to deliver highly effective solutions after investing more effort into the parameterization of the problem. Obtained results can be used for realizing different constructions near the stability limit, visualizing the sensitivity regarding the construction parameters or simply procuring more effective solutions.…