Abstract
The paper concerns design engineering problems involving multiple criteria and, in particular, the development of a formal trade-off strategy that can be employed by designers to mutually satisfy conflicting criteria as best as possible. A Pareto-optimal exchange analysis technique is adapted from the theory of social welfare economics as the basis for a search methodology to identify good-quality compromise designs. The concepts are initially developed for the two-criteria design problem so that the main ideas can be given a simple geometric interpretation. Curve-fitting, equation-discovery and equation-solving software are employed along with welfare economics analysis to find competitive general equilibrium states corresponding to Pareto-optimal compromise designs of a flexural plate governed by conflicting weight and deflection criteria. The trade-off strategy is then extended to the design of a multi-storey building governed by three conflicting criteria concerning capital cost, operating cost and income revenue.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Boadway, R., Bruce, N.: Welfare Economics, ch. 3, pp. 61–67. Basil Blackwell, Malden (1984)
Cheng, F.Y.: Multi-Objective Optimum Design of Seismic-Resistant Structures. In: Burns, S.A. (ed.) Recent Advances in Optimal Structural Design, ch. 9, pp. 241–255. ASCE-SEI, New York (2002)
Grierson, D.E.: Pareto Analysis of Pareto Design. In: Rivard, H., Miresco, E., Cheung, M. (eds.) Proceedings of Joint International Conference on Computing and Decision Making in Civil and Building Engineering, June 14-16 (2006)
Grierson, D.E., Khajehpour, S.: Method for Conceptual Design Applied to Office Buildings. J. of Computing in Civil Engineering 16(2), 83–103 (2002)
Khajehpour, S.: Optimal Conceptual Design of High-Rise Office Buildings. PhD Thesis, Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada, p. 191 (2001)
Koski, J.: Multicriterion Structural Optimization. In: Adeli, H. (ed.) Advances in Design Optimization, ch. 6, pp. 194–224. Chapman and Hall, New York (1994)
Osyczka, A.: Multicriterion Optimization in Engineering. Ellis Horwood, Chichester (1984)
Varian, H.R.: Microeconomic Analysis, 3rd edn. W.W. Norton & Co, New York (1992)
Varian, H.R.: MATLAB, Version 7.0, Automated Equation Solver. The MathWorks, Inc. (2005)
Varian, H.R.: TableCurve2D&3D, Version 5.01, Automated Curve-fitting and Equation Discovery. Systat Software, Inc., CA (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Grierson, D.E. (2006). Welfare Economics Applied to Design Engineering. In: Smith, I.F.C. (eds) Intelligent Computing in Engineering and Architecture. EG-ICE 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4200. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11888598_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11888598_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-46246-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46247-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)