ABSTRACT
Algeria is witnessing these last years a considerable development in individual constructions of average height (two or four levels). The majority of them are reinforced concrete beam-column framed buildings. This type of structure showed certain fragility during the earthquake of May 23rd, 2003, which shook the region of BOUMERDES. Moreover, in civil engineering the existing design tools do not solve the problem of choosing or optimizing structures. Those tools are often limited to the resisting capacity and the deformation of structure. For all these reasons, the present paper is particularly interested in modeling and constructing the problem related to the optimization of element “beam” taking into account the steel situated in the compressed zone of concrete into the global resistance of the section. The resolution of this problem and some illustrative results are presented as well.
