AIPDORCS
Artificially Intelligent Preliminary Design of Reinforced Concrete Structures
Research Abstract
Structural Design Today
Despite significant developments in the field of computing in construction, schematic engineering design – such as creating structural layouts based on architectural models – lags technologically. Schematic design is still manual and based on rules of thumb and experience. This stage is the most important and creative stage in the design process of buildings and greatly affects the final engineering solution. Even after rigorous analysis, a non-optimal initial design will often lead to a suboptimal structure.
Artificial Intelligence in Construction
In the construction industry, there are still relatively few applications that use artificial intelligence (AI) in the initial design phase. An advantage of AI is the ability to learn procedures from data describing cases. For example, using machine learning, it should be possible to receive as input many structural models, designed by engineers, and to learn how to generate and to evaluate new building designs. Thus, it should be possible to simulate the experience of engineers accumulated over years of practice. In this study, we aim to illustrate this idea by devising an artificially intelligent application capable of performing initial design of structures, in a fashion similar to, and perhaps even better than that of human engineers.
Research Method
1. Scope & Aim
Define the problem, scope and aims; devise a basic approach to the problem and specify a prototype software.
2. Software Prototype
Prepare a software prototype. The system has three primary components: a classifier, a data manipulator, and a schematic layout generator.
3. Experiment
Test the prototype in a set of experiments, including iterative improvement of the prototype.
4. Evaluation
Evaluate the results and conclusions. The goal is to use a form of ‘Turing Test’ to compare the acceptability of layouts proposed by the system with those prepared by engineers.
Call for Participants
The construction industry is set to undergo significant technological changes over the next few years, and we will have to adapt to these changes. Naturally, research toward intelligent structural design tools requires many great minds. It cannot be done by any individual or small group working alone. We need your help!
There are two ways for you to participate:
Structural Plans Submission
For learning to be qualitative, we need a database with a large number of structural plans. Please send us a schematic structural plan of a typical floor of a residential or office building. The database is anonymous, and we will remove any identifying information.
We will accept the following extensions: DWG, PDF
Please add a file before submission!
File Submitted. Thank you!
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
- Charles Darwin