Assessment and Optimization of Structural Robustness
Structural engineering ensures that buildings and other load-bearing systems can safely carry the loads they experience during their service life. If a component fails, alternative load paths are essential to prevent a collapse. While structural redundancy only describes the availability of such alternative paths, structural robustness refers to the extent to which local damage affects the behaviour of the entire system. However, there is still no standardized metric for quantifying structural robustness. Besides that, conventional designs are frequently optimized for a limited set of predefined load cases, which can make them vulnerable to unexpected failure scenarios.
The aim of this research is to develop a metric that quantifies structural robustness independent of the material used and occurring load cases. It could be computed by directly evaluating the effects of various damage scenarios on the system’s state. This metric will be integrated into a structural optimization framework to design structures that remain stiff in their intact state and show minimal deformation under multiple damage scenarios. In this way, structures can better withstand unforeseen damages, even those not explicitly considered during initial design phase.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Manfred Bischoff
Institute for Structural Mechanics (IBB), University of Stuttgart
RESEARCHERS
Simon Briem (IBB)
Malte von Scheven (IBB)
PARTNERS
Ashley Thrall, Kinetic Structures Laboratory, Notre Dame University, USA
Dayana Chiquin, Kinetic Structures Laboratory, Notre Dame University, USA
