Читать книгу Metaheuristics for Structural Design and Analysis - Yusuf Cengiz Toklu - Страница 13

Design and analysis are two extremely important aspects of structural engineering. Although they are known to be applied side by side, or one inside the other, historically, the case was different. Design began in the very early ages, together with the first human settlements, while analysis only saw the light of day during the Age of Enlightenment. In early times, the design of structures was accomplished by intuition, observation, experimentation and experience, as can be seen in the applications of ziggurats, pyramids, St. Sophia in Istanbul, Notre Dame in Paris and other historical structures of varying sizes.

Structural analysis involves concepts such as forces, bending moments, torques, stresses, strains, deformations, deflections, rotations and warping, which are difficult to comprehend for those who are not educated in this specific subject. Also, it is evident that comprehension of these concepts is not sufficient to produce any type of analysis; it has to be enriched by knowledge in order to conceive a mathematical model, after making some meaningful assumptions, as well as computational experience to solve multiple equations or to find the minimum of a function. Hence, analysis, which we know today to be part of design, was developed much later than the design that was sufficient to build many important structures like the ones cited above. Of course, now humans can design structures that were previously in conceivable as a result of our improved powers of analysis, amongst other factors.