Critical Failure Mode Determination of Steel Moment Frames by Plastic Analysis Optimization Principles

Determining the failure or failure mode of structures has long been a challenge for civil engineers. Traditional methods for analyzing structures are costly and complex. Plastic analysis, which involves combining pre-defined mechanisms, offers a less complex approach. However, as the number of potential mechanism combinations, or the search space, increases with the growing complexity of structural members, the effectiveness of this method diminishes. To address this issue, optimizers have been applied in the field of structural engineering to efficiently solve problems with large search spaces. Population-based meta-heuristic algorithms are widely used for their reduced dependency on input parameters. This research focuses on implementing the plastic theory of steel frames using MATLAB software, employing virtual work concepts and pre-defined mechanism combinations. A novel binary dolphin echolocation algorithm is proposed based on the principles of the primary algorithm. This algorithm is then utilized to optimize the plastic analysis method and determine the failure load factor and critical failure mode for sample frames. Additionally, the grey wolf optimizer and whale optimization algorithm are applied to optimize the problem, and the performance of all three algorithms is compared. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm yields accurate results with a minor margin of error compared to the other two algorithms.