"Search for solutions" in the problems of calculation of building structures.

Building structures are very diverse in their purpose and application. The reliability and safety of their work depends on many factors: geometric dimensions, materials used, acting external loads and their combinations, etc. The more optimal the design scheme is, the less labor-intensive the stages of calculation and design of the corresponding structure will be. If the efficiency criterion is a linear function, and the variables in the constraint system are also linear, then such a problem is a linear programming problem. Of the listed methods of mathematical programming, the most common and developed is linear programming. Solver is a Microsoft Excel add-in that can be used in structural analysis tasks. With its help, you can find the optimal value (maximum or minimum) of the formula contained in one cell, called the target, taking into account the restrictions on variable values in other cells. Simply put, with the help of the Search for a solution add-in, you can determine the maximum or minimum value of one cell by changing other cells. Most often, the Search for a solution add-in is used to solve optimization problems of the economy (simplex method, transport problem, etc.). There are practically no results of using this approach in the calculations of building structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]