ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF STRUCTURAL STEEL JOINTS AND CONNECTION: SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

The paper presents COMET software which enables to design steel structural joints widely used in civil and industrial engineering. Algorithm for designing each joint prototype has been presented as a set of operations implementing the rules for determining the interrelated values of the joint parameters. Each prototype is developed as an independent program that performs a full cycle of designing the joint and verification of the joint parameters according to the specified design codes. Searching of unknown joint parameters has been transformed to a decision making problem based on analysis of the joint mathematical model. Automatic searching of unknown joint parameters has been implemented as a multiple targeted improvement of a certain initial joint design in order to satisfy load-carrying capacity constraints taking into account the structural and assortment-based constraints. Multiple improvement of current joint design is performed on the basis of sensitivity analysis relative to variation of governing joint parameters.