Optimal placement of passive dampers on seismic and wind-excited buildingsusing combinatorial optimization

The performance of energy dissipative systems for the response reduction of complex civil engineering structures depends on their locations in the str ucture, in this paper, the optimal locations of energy dissipative systems have been investigated using combinatorial optimization based integer heuri stic programming techniques. Three intelligent search algorithms, namely, s equential, Worst-Out-Best-In (WOBI) and Exhaustive Single Point Substitutio n (ESPS) search methods, have been used to determine optimal locations for different types of objective functions. The applications of the proposed ap proach for the determination of optimal locations have been demonstrated fo r three seismic-excited buildings and one wind-excited building. It is show n that the optimal locations obtained by minimizing the peak interstory dri ft of buildings depend on the specific design earthquake. The WOBI and ESPS methods have been found to be quite effective in improving the locations o btained by the sequential search method.