Investigating an aesthetic utility function for the computational design of structural art
Open Access
- Author:
- Gergel, John
- Area of Honors:
- Civil Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Gordon Patrick Warn, Thesis Supervisor
Jeffrey A Laman, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- structural art
bridge aesthetics
structural optimization
truss bridges - Abstract:
- When designing and optimizing structures, engineers must make decisions based on maximizing the economy and efficiency of the structure. While these two factors are essential to a successful structural design, the aesthetic elegance of the structure is sometimes overlooked due in part to being difficult to quantify. Considering all these three criteria of economy, efficiency, and elegance can result in a design solution that can be considered “structural art”. This thesis attempts to establish a computational framework for structural art by quantifying the aesthetic beauty of truss bridges using a utility function. The utility function is generated through a review of literature about bridge aesthetics, and measurable aesthetic attributes are established for the function. The function is used in conjunction with a gradient-based topology optimization that can determine the optimal distribution of elements for a truss bridge superstructure with the goal of minimizing the structure’s compliance. The utility function and optimization are then applied to fourteen different truss bridge designs to rank designs based on compliance (or stiffness), cost, and aesthetics. Analysis of the results suggests that the proposed utility function might successfully order different bridge truss designs by their visual elegance, and that aesthetics can potentially be used as a criterion for ranking and eliminating structural design alternatives in a computational design framework.