PLASTIC ANALYSIS OF PLANAR FRAMES USING CBO AND ECBO ALGORITHMS

In rigid plastic analysis one of the most widely applicable methods that is based on the minimum principle, is the combination of elementary mechanisms which uses the upper bound theorem. In this method a mechanism is searched which corresponds to the smallest load factor. Mathematical programming can be used to optimize this search process for simple frames, and meta-heuristic algorithms are the best choice for larger frame structures. In this paper, the Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO) and its enhanced variant (ECBO) are employed to optimize the process of finding an upper bound for the collapse load factor of the planar frames. The efficiency of these algorithms is compared to that of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm through four numerical examples form multi-bay multi-story frames and pitched roof frames.