Structural Engineering Design Support by Constraint Satisfaction

Design tasks in structural engineering have always involved the use of constraints to formulate design requirements. Most existing algorithms for constraint satisfaction require input consisting of binary constraints on variables that have discrete values. Such restrictions limit their use in structural engineering since typical structural design tasks involve discrete and numerical variables. This paper provides an approach for decision support through approximating solution spaces of such constraint problems by local consistency. The approach is demonstrated for the selection of appropriate wind bracing for single story steel-framed buildings involving more than hundred variables. Finally, extension to conditional constraint satisfaction using different combinations of activation conditions is straightforward.