Design of Prestressed Concrete Transmission Poles: Optimization Approach

Abstract

Design of prestressed concrete transmission poles is formulated as an optimization problem by identifying design variables, a cost function, and constraints. Example problems are solved, and solutions are compared with published results. Several other cases of the examples are solved to investigate the effect of certain parameters on optimum design as well as to show the flexibility of the optimum design process. The optimization problem has mixed discrete-integer-continuous design variables, and two approaches are used to solve it. The first approach uses branch and bound algorithm for discrete variables, an enumeration method for integer variables, and sequential quadratic programming for continuous 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 software, many variations in the problem conditions and parameters can be studied in a relatively short time, leading to better designs.