Civil and Environmental Engineering

A semidefinite programming approach for the projection onto the cone of negative semidefinite symmetric tensors with applications to solid mechanics

  • Cristina Padovani
  • Margherita Porcelli
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Linear, Cone and Semidefinite Programming Tags , , ,

    We propose an algorithm for computing the projection of a symmetric second-order tensor onto the cone of negative semidefinite symmetric tensors with respect to the inner product defined by an assigned positive definite symmetric fourth-order tensor C. The projection problem is written as a semidefinite programming problem and an algorithm based on a primal-dual path-following … Read more

    Reaching Paris Agreement Goal through CDR/DAC Development: a Compact OR Model

  • Frédéric Babonneau
  • Alain Haurie
  • Alain Vielle
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering Tags , , , ,

    A compact operations research (OR) model is proposed to analyse the prospects of meeting the Paris Agreement targets when direct air capture technologies can be used or not. The main features of the model are (i) the representation of the economy and energy use with a nested constant elasticity of substitution production function; (ii) the … Read more

    Approximate Dynamic Programming for Crowd-shipping with In-store Customers

  • Kianoush Mousavi
  • Merve Bodur
  • Mucahit Cevik
  • Matthew J. Roorda
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dynamic Programming, Transportation Tags , , , ,

    Crowd-shipping has gained significant attention as a last-mile delivery option over the recent years. In this study, we propose a variant of dynamic crowd-shipping model with in-store customers as crowd-shippers to deliver online orders within few hours. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process and develop an approximate dynamic programming (ADP) policy using … Read more

    Global optimality in minimum compliance topology optimization of frames and shells by moment-sum-of-squares hierarchy

  • Didier Henrion
  • Martin Kružík
  • Marek Tyburec
  • Jan Zeman
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Constrained Nonlinear Optimization, Semi-definite Programming Tags , , , , ,

    The design of minimum-compliance bending-resistant structures with continuous cross-section parameters is a challenging task because of its inherent non-convexity. Our contribution develops a strategy that facilitates computing all guaranteed globally optimal solutions for frame and shell structures under multiple load cases and self-weight. To this purpose, we exploit the fact that the stiffness matrix is … Read more

    Adaptable Energy Management System for Smart Buildings

  • Miguel F. Anjos
  • Juan A. Gomez-Herrera
  • Kenneth McKinnon
  • Ilaria Salerno
    • Categories Applications - OR and Management Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Optimization of Simulated Systems Tags , , , ,

    This paper presents a novel adaptable energy management system for smart buildings. In this framework we model the energy consumption of a living unit, and its energy exchange with the surroundings. We explicitly consider the impact of the outside environment and design features such as building orientation, automatic shading, and double facade. We formulate this … Read more

    Modular-topology optimization with Wang tilings: An application to truss structures

  • Martin Doskar
  • Martin Kružík
  • Matej Lepš
  • Marek Tyburec
  • Jan Zeman
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Convex Optimization, Meta Heuristics Tags , , , ,

    Modularity is appealing for solving many problems in optimization. It brings the benefits of manufacturability and reconfigurability to structural optimization, and enables a trade-off between the computational performance of a Periodic Unit Cell (PUC) and the efficacy of non-uniform designs in multi-scale material optimization. Here, we introduce a novel strategy for concurrent minimum-compliance design of … Read more

    Resilience assessment for interdependent urban infrastructure systems using dynamic network flow models

  • Panagiotis Angeloudis
  • Nils Goldbeck
  • Washington Ochieng
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Optimization of Simulated Systems, Transportation

    Critical infrastructure systems in cities are becoming increasingly interdependent, therefore exacerbating the impacts of disruptive events through cascading failures, hindered asset repairs and network congestion. Current resilience assessment methods fall short of fully capturing such interdependency effects as they tend to model asset reliability and network flows separately and often rely on static flow assignment … Read more

    Data-DrivenWater Allocation under Climate Uncertainty: A Distributionally Robust Approach

  • Güzin Bayraksan
  • David Love
  • Jangho Park
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Robust Optimization, Stochastic Programming Tags , , , ,

    This paper investigates the application of techniques from distributionally robust optimization (DRO) to water allocation under future uncertainty. Specifically, we look at a rapidly-developing area of Tucson, Arizona. Tucson, like many arid and semi-arid regions around the world, faces considerable uncertainty in its ability to provide water for its citizens in the future. The main … Read more

    FINITE ELEMENT MODEL UPDATING FOR STRUCTURAL APPLICATIONS

  • Maria Girardi
  • Margherita Porcelli
  • Cristina Padovani
  • Daniele Pellegrini
  • Leonardo Robol
    • Categories Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nonlinear Optimization Tags , , , ,

    A novel method for performing model updating on finite element models is presented. The approach is particularly tailored to modal analyses of buildings, by which the lowest frequencies, obtained by using sensors and system identification approaches, need to be matched to the numerical ones predicted by the model. This is done by optimizing some unknown … Read more

    Optimal Installation for Electric Vehicle Wireless Charging Lanes

  • Mashrur Chowdhury
  • MD Zadid Khan
  • Ilya Safro
  • Hayato Ushijima-Mwesigwa
    • Categories 0-1 Programming, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Transportation

    Range anxiety, the persistent worry about not having enough battery power to complete a trip, remains one of the major obstacles to widespread electric-vehicle adoption. As cities look to attract more users to adopt electric vehicles, the emergence of wireless in-motion car charging technology presents itself as a solution to range anxiety. For a limited … Read more