Optimization techniques are increasingly being used for performing nonlinear structural analysis. Under these circumstances the structural design problem can be viewed as a nested optimization problem. The present paper suggests that there are computational benefits to treating this nested problem as a large single optimization problem. That is, the response variables (such as displacements) and the structural parameters are all treated as design variables in a unified formulation which performs simultaneously the design and analysis. Three truss examples are used for the demonstration comparing two nested optimization procedures with two computational procedures for the simultaneous solution. The examples show that the simultaneous approach is competitive with the more traditional nested approach.
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