The Future of Engineering Design Automation through Artificial Intelligence- Personal View

Artificial Intelligence is being advanced to the point where engineering design can be automated to an unprecedented extent. Within a decade, most structural and geotechnical design packages may be equipped with their own generative algorithms to create models, optimize problems, and suggest design options that consider multi-objective optimization and multi-constraint scenarios.

Source: Generated by Chat GPT5

Shear Wall Topology Design

For example, a building design with the optimum location of concrete shear walls allows us to choose options for the wall locations that

1. {Minimize material cost, Maximize stiffness} --> Provide the most effective shape of walls at the most effective locations.

2. Provide adequate strength

3. Satisfy maximum story drift

This problem belongs to the class of topology optimization problems.

Expert System for Strengthening Design

The advances in structural concrete strengthening design may enable the software to suggest the best strengthening options for damaged members. It will gather input on damage descriptions, the existing member section, and the target strength of the members after strengthening. Then, perform classification models using expert-trained data and provide detailed suggestions for repair and strengthening methods. Also, metaheuristics could obtain the most efficient instructions to repair and strengthen using any scheduling algorithm.

Retaining Wall and Sheet Pile Wall Design

The designs of retaining walls and sheet pile walls can reach the full generative design capability. The user prompts the retaining height, soil properties, surcharges, and groundwater scenarios, and then the software can automatically generate the optimum section of the retaining wall. For the sheet pile wall, the best section from the steel database can be selected to control strength and displacement.

Conclusion

These are only a few possibilities in which metaheuristics and machine learning algorithms can assist engineers in solving more demanding projects. The development in this field is progressing quickly and is closer than anyone could have imagined.