DESIGN OF PRESTRESSED CONCRETE TRANSMISSION POLES - OPTIMIZATION APPROACH

Design of stressed concrete transmission poles is formulated as an opt imization problem by identifying design variables, a cost function, an d constraints. Example problems are solved, and solutions are compared with published results. Several other cases of the examples are solve d to investigate the effect of certain parameters on optimum design as well as to show the flexibility of the optimum design process. The op timization problem has mixed discrete-integer-continuous design variab les, and two approaches are used to solve it. The first approach uses branch and bound algorithm for discrete variables, an enumeration meth od for integer variables, and sequential quadratic programming for con tinuous variables. The second approach uses genetic algorithms for all variables. It is concluded that the optimum design process gives more economical designs compared to the conventional design process. Once the optimum design problem is formulated and implemented into a softwa re; many variations in the problem conditions and parameters can be st udied in a relatively short time, leading to better designs.