Automated specification of steel reinforcement to support the optimisation of RC floors

A Building Information Modelling (BIM)-enabled computational approach was presented in this paper for the automated specification of steel reinforcement to support the optimisation of reinforced concrete (RC) flat slabs. After importing slab geometries from BIM, the proposed procedure utilised internal forces output from Finite Element Model (FEM) to map required reinforcement in two stages. In the first stage, the reinforcement specifications matched the spatial resolution of the FEM. In the second, the reinforcement was adjusted by imposing constructability functions to limit the number of arrangements in terms of zones and bar spacing. The aim of the paper was to investigate the parametric capabilities of the proposed approach in the context of an optimisation model for the generation of material-efficient structural designs. Numerical examples were presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the automated specification procedure. The material efficiency and the design complexity of the developed reinforcement configurations were also assessed against a conventional solution under realistic design conditions.