Automation in Construction 146 (2023) 104677

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Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Automated structural design optimization of steel reinforcement using

graph neural network and exploratory genetic algorithms
Mingkai Li a, Yuhan Liu a, Billy C.L. Wong a, Vincent J.L. Gan b, *, Jack C.P. Cheng a, *
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 999077, Hong Kong, China
b
Department of the Built Environment, National University of Singapore, 117566, Singapore

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Structural design optimization for steel reinforcement (rebar) is a critical part of reinforced concrete structures.
Reinforced concrete structure In practice, this process is conducted manually or semi-automatically for each element, which is time-consuming
Steel reinforcement design and relies on engineers' knowhow and experience for buildability improvement, material savings and clash
Clash diagnosis
resolution. This paper presents an automated pipeline for clash-free rebar design optimization integrating graph
Graph neural network
Genetic algorithm
neural networks (GNN) and exploratory genetic algorithms (EGA). Graph representation is adopted to charac­
terize rebar layouts in both structural elements and different kinds of reinforced concrete joints. GNN leverages
graph representation of rebars to consider the parametric relationship between different rebar groups in a single
structural element or among multiple structural elements, enhancing the efficiency of clash-free rebar design
optimization. EGA supports design checking and further optimization according to building codes to achieve the
optimal design. Compared with conventional optimization methods, the proposed pipeline can automatically
identify optimal clash-free rebar design in compliance with code-stipulated requirements while reducing 75%–
90% of the computation time, which shows enormous potential for practical use in the industry.

1. Introduction the previous design generation process. This is caused by the mechanism
of metaheuristic algorithms, that is, for each optimization process, these
Reinforced concrete (RC) structure is the most common structural algorithms will initialize with randomly generated population, and
form. The cost of RC structures is composed of the costs of steel rein­ there is no way for them to learn from the experience of optimizing
forcement, concrete and formwork [1]. As concrete and formworks previous problems in order to accelerate the optimization process of the
remain almost unchanged after the size of the structural component is next problem.
determined, structural design optimization for steel reinforcement, A distinguishing feature of steel reinforcement design is that the steel
which involves specifying the positions and diameters of steel rein­ reinforcements will across several sections, and the layouts of different
forcement (which is also called rebar) in RC elements, is critical to rebar groups will affect each other. Fig. 1 provides an example of a RC
improvement of buildability and cost efficiency [2]. The design of steel beam, where the number of rebars in one group will affect that of the
reinforcement for RC structures relies on the knowledge and experience related rebar group. However, conventional design optimization
of engineers. This process is performed manually or semi-automatically methods for steel reinforcement at section level usually provide design
with computer-aided design software, which is time-demanding and according to the structural analysis results such as bending moment,
sometimes error-prone. Studies have also shown that optimization of the axial force and shear force for several typical sections, which fails to
rebar design can significantly reduce the material cost, construction consider the parametric relationship of rebar layout across different
time, and waste generation [3–5]. Though previous work has introduced sections and between multiple structural elements, leading to poor
Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) [6] and Building In­ buildability, material waste, and sometimes non-code-compliant design.
formation Modeling (BIM) [7,8] into steel reinforcement design and There is a lack of systematic consideration and clear representation of
showcased that practical designs can be achieved [9], design optimi­ the interrelationship of rebars across different sections and between
zation based on metaheuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithms multiple structural elements.
(GAs) [10,11] is time-consuming and cannot progressively learn from Some emerging machine learning techniques provide a turning point

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: vincent.gan@nus.edu.sg (V.J.L. Gan), cejcheng@ust.hk (J.C.P. Cheng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104677
Received 14 June 2022; Received in revised form 14 November 2022; Accepted 17 November 2022
Available online 2 December 2022
0926-5805/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M. Li et al. Automation in Construction 146 (2023) 104677

Fig. 1. Example of RC beam: rebar layout of one section will affect other.

for solving the abovementioned issues. Graph neural networks (GNNs) their interrelationship in both elements and joints, (3) the first inte­
have been proven tremendously successfully for handling unstructured gration of GNN and EGA in rebar design optimization for higher effi­
data like email and social website, by providing the graph structure to ciency, (4) the innovative formulation and data-driven model for
define the relationship between these data [12,13]. Graphs are helpful automated rebar clash diagnosis and resolution. The study lays down the
in defining concepts that are abstract, like relationships between en­ foundation of graph representation of rebar layouts in both elements and
tities, which coincides with the features of the rebar design problem. In joints, facilitating the adoption of graph-based techniques like GNN for
this regard, formulating the rebar design problem in graphs and rebar design and optimization. With thorough consideration of the in­
applying graph neural network to solve it would have great significance. dustrial requirements on the rebar design efficiency and buildability, the
However, since GNN is essentially a form of applied statistics, it cannot approach proposed in this paper with detailed workflow and imple­
guarantee that all the design constraints will be satisfied. Therefore, a mentation steps, can be useful for software development in the future to
feasible solution is to combine GNN with metaheuristic algorithm to assist engineers in daily design and reduce rework and save time and
leverage strength of both approaches to efficiently explore the search cost on the construction site.
space of rebar design while keeping compliance with all the design The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews pre­
requirements. vious relevant literature on steel reinforcement clash avoidance and
Therefore, this study aims to develop an automated structural design design optimization using GNN and metaheuristic algorithms. Section 3
optimization method integrating GNN. An innovative algorithm with presents the methodology details including the problem formulation,
high robustness called exploratory genetic algorithm (EGA) is also GNN and EGA for design optimization. Section 4 presents experimental
developed based on GA to conduct code-compliance checking and results and an illustrative example. Section 5 concludes the whole paper
further optimization of the design provided by GNN. A design optimi­ and discusses the future work.
zation framework incorporating GNN is presented first to demonstrate
the conversion of building geometric information and structural analysis 2. Literature review
into graph representation. Following this, graph-structured data are
further utilized to support design optimization and clash diagnosis. 2.1. Steel reinforcement design
Based on the graph representation with element's design information
embedded, a rebar design proposal module is developed using GNN to Steel reinforcement not only affects the material cost of a concrete
allow rapid rebar design to satisfy the need of industrial practice. Be­ structure, but also impacts its labor cost, which can make up over 30% of
sides, a GNN-based rebar clash diagnosis module is developed to quickly the total construction cost [14]. Though previous study tended to focus
identify and resolve clashes in rebar design. Workflow and imple­ on the material efficiency when carrying out design optimization for
mentation details of the key modules are presented with examples. Last steel reinforcement [1,15,16], some researchers start to pay more
but not least, an illustrative example of a RC frame structure is presented attention to the buildability of design in recent years [9,17], due to its
to illustrate the proposed design approach, and the results show that the effect on the structural behavior of RC structure and the productivity of
approach can generate practical rebar designs comparable to those onsite construction. In this regard, improving steel reinforcement design
generated by metaheuristic algorithms with much less time. The can not only save material cost but also enhance the buildability for
uniqueness of this study includes: (1) the automated design optimization greater automation and productivity of construction.
for steel reinforcement using machine learning technique and meta­ A notable characteristic of rebar detailing design is that the required
heuristic algorithm, (2) the graph representations of rebar layouts and steel areas of all sections should be satisfied by rebars going through

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Fig. 2. Proposed framework for clash-free optimal rebar design using GNN.

these sections. In industrial practices, several typical sections are iden­ accurate rebar design [3], estimation [18] and prefabrication [19].
tified for an element for rebar detailing design. For example, for a span Some research efforts have been made to automatically optimize rebar
of beam, usually three typical sections (right end, middle span and left design using metaheuristic algorithms (MA). However, MAs are gener­
end) are selected to represent the numerical distribution of steel areas, ally time-consuming and cannot satisfy the practical use. Neural net­
as shown in Fig. 1, and the rebar layout of one section will affect other. works were found capable of reducing time required for design process
Besides, for each section, the top rebars and bottom rebars are designed [1]. This is because neural networks can be trained using a large number
separately, and the bar numbers of them sometimes will have conflicts of optimal designs, and when a design problem is given, they will come
when stirrups with more than two legs are used. For continuous beam up with a solution instead of going through the design process.
that is more common in real-life projects with more than one span,
usually they will be considered together during design process, which 2.2.1. Metaheuristic algorithms
means the number of sections taken into consideration will rise in pro­ In previous studies on rebar design optimization, MAs are commonly
portion as the number of spans increases. In a word, treating the rebar used for different types of RC elements including beams [3,15], columns
detailing design in each section as a variable, the rebar detailing design [20], slabs [2] and shear walls [5]. Most of these algorithms are
is a high-dimensional problem with design variables highly correlated to population-based optimization algorithms like GAs with mechanism
each other. inspired by biological evolution, such as selection, crossover and mu­
tation. They have proven effective and robust in solving NP-hard
2.2. Automated design optimization for steel reinforcement problems with their parallel mechanism and good expansibility to
combine with other algorithms [21,22]. However, the disadvantages of
Computer-aided rebar design has been explored since last century applying MAs to rebar detailing design optimization are also obvious.
due to the imperative need of the construction industry to efficient and These algorithms usually start with a randomly generated initial

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Fig. 3. Graph construction I: preliminary rebar layout analysis – example of two-span continuous beam.

population, which means that previous design experience cannot be elements. Results found that the GNN-based method could dramatically
inherited for new design cases. Besides, most existing MA-based rebar reduce the optimization time required by GA. Gan [32] applied GNN to
design optimization approaches are developed at element level [2,5,20], process the graph data model for volumetric modules with spatial at­
and with the non-negligible computation time required, the overall time tributes, topological relationship, geometrics and semantics. The infor­
consumption may be unbearable in real-life projects with thousands of mation extracted by GNN is then utilized to support automatic
elements. generative design of modular buildings. Though GNNs have shown their
potential in solving design problems in the field of architecture and civil
2.2.2. Graph neural networks engineering, the application of GNN in the steel reinforcement design is
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have received a lot of attention in still lacking.
recent years for their ability to analyze graph-structured data. They are
essentially a class of neural networks, but the biggest difference from
2.3. Clash diagnosis and resolution
traditional neural networks is that they can be used to process data
represented in graph structure (which is also called graph). Graph,
Rebar detailing design in current practice does not involve deter­
which consists of nodes and edges between nodes, has the potential to
mining the position of each rebar and considering the intersection be­
denote a large number of systems across different domains, such as so­
tween elements, which means that the rebar clashes cannot be identified
cial networks [23], physical systems [24], traffic networks [25], and
in the design stage [9]. Rebar clashes are likely to occur at the most
knowledge graphs [26]. The rediscovery of GNNs is attributed to recent
congested locations, such as beam-column joints with rebars extending
advances in deep neural networks, especially convolutional neural
from different elements connecting to the joint, and these clashes are
networks (CNNs) [12,13]. CNNs are capable of extracting multi-scale
generally identified and resolved manually by workers on site, which is
spatial features and learning highly expressive representations, which
tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, not all clashes can be resolved
led to the breakthrough in almost all machine learning fields [27–29]. As
for a given rebar layout without revising the rebar detailing design [3].
the generalization of CNNs on graphs, GNNs can operate on not only
In most systems like architectural, structural and MEP systems,
regular Euclidean data like images (2D grids) and texts (1D sequences)
conducting proactive clash avoidance in design phase is widely regarded
required by CNNs, but also non-Euclidean data like social networks and
as more effective and less time-consuming than identifying and
molecular structure. Therefore, GNNs are adopted in this paper to pro­
resolving clashes passively in construction phase. Existing research
cess the graphs representing rebar layouts, which are a kind of non-
[33,34] and even some commercial software like Naviswork [35] can
Euclidean data with variable sizes.
already identify clashes between rebars, though automatic clash reso­
At present, there are very few applications of GNN in the field of
lution approach that is practical and recognized by the industry is still
architecture, engineering, and construction. Nauata et al. [30] encoded
lacking. Hu et al. [36] provided an automatic approach to identify
the constraints of the house layout problem into the graph structure of
optimal clash correction sequence for MEP system, which could reduce
its relational networks, and applied GNN to aggregate the information of
rework and facilitate design coordination. Automatic clash resolution is
adjacent nodes in the rational networks and construct the feature vector
realized for MEP system by modifying the geometry [37] or location
to generate various of floorplans with high quality. Chang and Cheng
[38] of one of the two clashing components, but the methods are not
[31] formulated the building structures as graphs by simplifying the
suitable for rebar clashes because modification of rebar geometry or
components as joints and their connectivity as edges, based on which
location may lead to non-compliance with design standards. Liu et al.
GNNs were trained to understand the structural layout, predict struc­
[39] automized the clash resolution by employing multi-agent rein­
tural simulation results, and propose the optimal cross-sections of
forcement learning and BIM. However, the method could not guarantee

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Fig. 4. Three main types of clashes in RC beam-column joints.

Fig. 5. Graph construction II: joint analysis.

that the rebar can satisfy the standard shape code of the industry, which interrelationship between sections' rebar layouts, the element's rebar
diminishes the applicability. layout is represented as a graph (element graph representation), and
structure analysis results are then embedded into these graphs. These
3. Methodology graph representations are then passed to the RDP-GNN, which will
provide initial rebar designs according to the graph structure and also
The proposed framework is shown in Fig. 2. The framework involves the information embedded. At the same time, the beam-column joints in
two GNNs: one for rebar design proposal (RDP-GNN), and one for clash the BIM model are analyzed and represented as graphs (joint graph
diagnosis (CD-GNN). When training the two GNNs, DfMA principles are representation). The initial rebar designs of elements are then integrated
also included to enhance the buildability of rebar designs. Starting from into the joint graph representations. Design checking and optimization
the BIM model, the structure model is achieved by idealization and used are then carried out based on the initial rebar designs using a meta­
for structural analysis. With preliminary rebar layout analysis, which is heuristic algorithm. During the process, rebar designs in the neighbor of
to identify the typical rebar layout of each element as well as the the initial rebar design are evaluated for each element and checked to

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Fig. 6. Workflow of GNN-based rebar design – an example of a 2-span continuous beam.

Fig. 7. Method for GNN training dataset preparation.

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Fig. 8. Dataset preparation for rebar design proposal graph neural network (RDP-GNN).

Fig. 9. RDP-GNN model architecture.

Note: 1) ‘FC’ denotes fully-connected layer, and the numbers in the brackets refer to the number of inputs and outputs, respectively. 2) The activation function used in
the GNN for all layers (except FC5) is ReLU function [42], which is not shown in the above figure.

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Fig. 10. Formulation of the clash diagnosis problem.

satisfy all the code-stipulated requirements, and those code-compliant are dummy variables that can only take value 1 or 0. For “end or mid”,
designs are retained and sorted according to their total costs, which “1” implies that the rebar group needs to be anchored into the end
constitute a feasible rebar design set. The optimal rebar design is set as supports (like Group 1, 3, 4, and 5), while “0” implies that the rebar
the default design for each element, and clash diagnosis is conducted for group lies between the end supports and no anchorage is needed (like
each joint using the CD-GNN. When clashes are identified, rebar design Group 2). For “top or bottom”, “1” refers to top rebars (like Group 1, 2,
in some elements will be replaced by the design in the design set to solve and 3), while “0” refers to bottom rebars (like Group 4 and 5). The
the clash. The process may take several iterations to ensure a clash-free element graph representation can be constructed by linking the nodes
optimal rebar design, which is then used to update the BIM model. with edges according to the interrelationship between different groups
Details of key modules in the framework will be introduced in Sections of rebars as discussed in Section 1. The edge between a pair of nodes
3.1–3.4. implies that the rebar design of these two groups of rebars will affect
each other.

3.1. Graph representations of rebar 3.1.2. Graph representation of RC joint

The main function of graph construction II (GC2) module is to
To develop the GNNs, steel rebars have to be formulated and rep­ automatically analyze the connection relationship of rebars at building
resented properly by graph representations. In this study, the graph joints in the BIM model, and get the corresponding graph representation
representations consist of two salient components: (1) the first graph for clash diagnosis. Clash diagnosis is to judge whether a RC joint with
represents the rebar layout embedding corresponding design informa­ given rebar layouts have clashes, and whether these clashes can be
tion to support the global exploration of optimal layout design, and (2) solved if yes. This paper first divides rebar clashes into two classes:
the second graph represents RC joints for analyzing the connectivity of solvable and unsolvable clashes. Since the space at beam-column joint is
steel reinforcement in clash diagnosis. very limited, and rebars need to satisfy minimum spacing requirements,
sometimes rebar clashes cannot be resolved with code compliance even
3.1.1. Graph representation of rebar layout by bending the rebars, which are defined as unsolvable clashes in this
Graph construction I (GC1) module is to automatically transfer a paper. In general, clashes in RC beam-column joints can be classified
given RC element into graph representation integrating the design in­ into following three types: (1) clashes between longitudinal rebars of
formation and the typical rebar layout for GNN-based rebar design beams in different directions, (2) clashes between longitudinal rebars of
proposal. As shown in Fig. 3, this module first identifies the typical rebar beams in the same direction, and (3) clashes between longitudinal rebars
layout and divides rebars into groups, according to the design codes and of beams and the column, as shown in Fig. 4. The first type of clashes can
preference of practice. For example, for a two-span continuous beam be easily resolved by slightly moving the longitudinal rebars of one
shown in, its typical rebar layout can be considered to consist of 5 rebar beam upward or downward, which implies that this kind of clashes is
groups, which can be treated as nodes in graph presentation. Then the always solvable. In this regard, when judging whether clashes at a beam-
design-related information of each rebar group like geometrical, posi­ column joint could be solved or not, it is reasonable to focus on the
tional information, etc., is integrated into the graph. In this paper, each clashes between beam rebars and column rebars rather than the clashes
node has its 6 features, including width, depth, length, required steel between rebars from different beams.
area, “end or mid” and “top or bottom”. “End or mid” indicates the Fig. 5 provides an example of a typical beam-column joint to illus­
position of rebars from the horizontal perspective, while “top or bottom” trate how GC2 transfers the rebar layouts at joints into revised bipartite
indicates the position from the vertical perspective. These two features

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Fig. 11. Advantage of considering the deviation from the initial positions of rebars.

Fig. 12. CD-GNN model architecture.

Note: 1) ‘FC’ denotes fully-connected layer, and the numbers in the brackets refer to the number of inputs and outputs, respectively. 2) The activation function used
for GAT layers, FC1, FC2 and FC3 is tanh function, while the one for FC4 is sigmoid function.

graphs. In the graph representation, each node represents the position of longitudinal rebar, while “0” refers to a column longitudinal rebar. As
a rebar, while each edge represents the relationship between two rebars. shown in Fig. 5, the positions of rebars in the y direction will not affect
Each node has 4 features including category, x-coordinate of rebar the existence of clashes at joints, therefore the y-coordinate is not
center, rebar diameter, and movability. The “category” is a dummy considered as a node feature. “Movability” defines whether a rebar can
variable defining which type of RC elements the rebar belongs to. To be be moved during the clash diagnosis, which is a reflection of the con­
specific, the value “1” for “category” means that the rebar is a beam struction practices since construction workers tend to slightly change

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each node. In another word, the rebar layout is predicted for each rebar
group.

3.2.1. Exploratory genetic algorithm (EGA)

As mentioned above, the training of the GNN for rebar design pro­
posal needs to be based on a large dataset with abundant rebar design
cases together with corresponding optimal designs. This paper employed
the DfMA-oriented rebar design optimization approach proposed in [9]
to consider both material cost and installation cost for rebar designs. The
GA-based optimization algorithm combining Hooke-Jeeves method
(GA-HJ) in [9] is also improved in this paper to provide optimal rebar
designs with higher efficiency. Hooke-Jeeves method (HJ) [40] is a
numerical optimization method to find the best match in a multi-
dimensional analysis space of possibilities, which does not require a
gradient. It includes two kinds of mechanisms for the optimal solutions
searching: exploratory move and pattern move. Exploratory move tests
the original point in one dimension only, while pattern move searches in
the direction from the original point to the new point (generated by the
exploratory move). However, the algorithm is time-consuming, since the
exploratory move is conducted on each individual in each generation,
and pattern move is barely effective for the rebar design problem. Be­
sides, due to the GA selection operator, sometimes there are some
identical offspring in one generation, and it seems meaningless to
execute a deterministic algorithm like HJ for every identical offspring.
Therefore, improvement is made in this paper for higher efficiency by
only executing the exploratory move for one of the identical offspring,
which is called the exploratory genetic algorithm (EGA) in this paper, as
shown in Fig. 7. Detailed comparison between EGA, GA and GA-HJ is
Fig. 13. Hybrid mechanism combining GNN and GA for rebar design checking provided in Section 4.2.
and optimization.
3.2.2. Graph dataset preparation
the positions of rebars to avoid clashes. In this process, the outer two The developed EGA is then used to generate optimal rebar designs to
longitudinal rebars of columns should be kept at the corners of stirrups establish the dataset with 2500 design cases, as shown in Fig. 8(a).
so they are not movable. The edge between two parts of nodes means Hundreds of design cases with elements' basic information including
that the positions of column rebars should not overlap with that of beam geometry, structural analysis results, etc., were collected from real life
rebars, while the edges among one part of the graph indicate the code- projects, and some noises were introduced to these basic cases to
stipulated spacing requirements between the rebars should be satisfied. generate more design cases by changing the values of those above­
For multi-layer rebar layouts, the proposed joint graph representa­ mentioned information. Both the basic cases and generated cases were
tion is also applicable since the inner layer of rebars will always align then passed to the EGA to search for the optimal rebar design. For each
with the outmost layer, and rebar diameter of the inner layer of rebars design case with its corresponding optimal designs, GC1 module rep­
will not exceed that of the outmost layer, which means that the outmost resented it as a graph, which is a sample in the data set for the GNN
layer is usually the most congested part and solving clashes in this layer model training. Fig. 8(b) provides an example of the graphs in the
can ensure no clash in the whole section. dataset. The simply-supported beam is transferred into a graph with
nodes integrating the beam's information and edges showing the typical
3.2. Graph neural network for rebar design proposal (RDP-GNN) rebar layouts, while the design for each node (bar number and diameter)
is also included as the targets.
Provided the graph representation of steel reinforcement, a GNN is
applied to learn from previous rebar design examples in order to rapidly 3.2.3. The RDP-GNN model architecture
propose an initial rebar layout for a new design case. To start with, a The detailed architecture of the GNN is presented in Fig. 9, which
dataset with thousands of rebar design cases is established for the includes one stem and two branches for the predictions of rebar number
training of the GNN. Following this, the GNN model is trained properly, and diameter, respectively. Graph convolutional layers are leveraged to
during which the network architecture and hyperparameters are fine- aggregate the neighbor's information for each node and learn a new
tuned. A well-trained GNN can efficiently identify the possible regions representation. Different GNNs are tested and graph attention network
where optimal rebar design can be found with a high degree of confi­ (GAT) [41] is adopted in this paper, which is a combination of GNN and
dence and thereby accelerate the global exploration process. The initial attention layers. A GAT can leverage the attention mechanism in GNN to
design is then passed to clash diagnosis by another GNN, and further specify different weights to different nodes present in the neighbor,
checking and optimization by EGA to achieve the optimal design. addressing some of the shortcomings of the traditional GNNs.
With the pre-trained RDP-GNN, the initial rebar design of a RC Huber loss function [43] is employed in the proposed GNN to eval­
element is proposed in the following steps, as shown in Fig. 6 (taking a uate the training losses for the two outputs. This loss combines the ad­
two-span continuous beam as an example). First, given a design case, a vantages of both mean absolute error (MAE) and mean square error
graph with node feature information is constructed accordingly, where (MSE), and it is less sensitive to outliners in data [44]. As for the overall
the features of each node are as described in Section 3.1. Then the graph loss function, since the GNN has two outputs, the training loss is set as
is passed to the pre-trained GNN with graph convolutional layers, liner the weighted sum of rebar number prediction loss and dimeter predic­
layers, and activation functions to aggregate each node's neighbors' in­ tion loss as below.
formation and learn a new representation. Finally, based on the new
L = α × Lnum + (1 − α) × Ldia
graph representation, the rebar number and diameter are predicted for

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100 100
Clossness: 100.00% Clossness: 99.36%

80 80
Accuracy: 63.24% Accuracy: 79.77%

Accuracy/%
Accuracy/%

60 60
Accuracy-1 Accuracy-1
Accuracy Accuracy
40 40
Accuracy+1 Accuracy+1
Clossness Clossness
20 20

0 0
0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500 0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500
Epoch Epoch
(a) Prediction of bar number (b) Prediction of bar diameter

100
Clossness: 99.36%

80
Accuracy/%

60 Accuracy: 54.18%

40
Accuracy
Closeness
20

0
0 250 500 750 1000 1250 1500
Epoch
(c) Prediction of both bar number and diameter
Fig. 14. Training process and performance of the RDP-GNN.

where L, Lnum and Ldia are the overall training loss, the loss for rebar training.
number prediction and the loss for rebar diameter prediction, respec­
tively. α is a weighting factor, which is set as 0.5 in this paper. 3.3.1. Formulation of the clash diagnosis problem
The dataset constructed in Section 3.2.2 has 2500 design cases Following DfMA concept, some assumptions can be made: (1)
including 1000 simply-supported beams, 1000 two-span continuous building workers temp to distribute the rebars evenly in one layer for
beams, and 500 3-span continuous beams. It is split into two parts with a both beams and columns; (2) it would be more practical if the positions
ratio of 80% training set and 20% testing set, and fed to the GNN. The of rebars do not deviate too much from the initial position (by even
optimizer used is the Adam optimization algorithm [45], and the distribution) after clash resolution; (3) the corner rebars of column
learning rate is set as 0.002. cannot be moved. Then the rebar clash diagnosis problem can be
formulated as follows. For a given rebar layout, a vector D listing all the
diameter of rebars from one side to the other side can be used to describe
3.3. Graph neural network for clash diagnosis and resolution (CD-GNN) the layout. Dc and Db refer to the rebar layout of column and beam,
respectively. cc and cb refer to the cover of column and beam, respec­
With the initial rebar design generated by RDP-GNN and the RC joint tively. wc and wb refer to the width of column and beam, respectively. A
graph representation, another GNN is trained to conduct clash diagnosis, coordination system can be established as shown in Fig. 10, where line x
that is to judge whether there is any unsolvable clash (as defined in = 0 is placed at the edge of column. The positions of rebars are variables
Section 3.1.2) in the RC joint with given rebar layouts. Compared to the in the clash avoidance problem. For beam rebars, since each of them can
clash identification and resolution approach proposed in [9] that is time- be bent in the joint area, n variables are requiresd to determine a layout
consuming, the GNN-based method can learn from a large number of with n rebars. For example, three beam rebars in Fig. 10 require 3 var­
examples and identify those unsolvable clashes with ignorable compu­ iables to specify their positions. As for column rebars, since the corner
tational time with a pre-trained GNN model, which can significantly rebars are fixed, for a layout with (m + 2) rebars, only m variables are
enhance the efficiency of rebar design in practices and help to avoid required. For example, four column rebars in Fig. 10 require only 2
manual clash resolution and rework on construction sites. For the above variables to specify their positions, and the spacing between the third
purpose, the clash diagnosis problem should be properly formulated, and the fourth rebar will be determined if sc,1 and sc,2 are determined.
and a dataset with abundant cases needs to be prepared for the GNN

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Fig. 15. Training process and performance of the CD-GNN.

Fig. 16. Improvement of EGA with example of a 3-span continuous beam.

Therefore, the design variables can be expressed as x = [sc,1, …, sc,m, sb,1, shown in Fig. 11. By considering the deviation from the initial positions
sb,2, …, sb,n]. According to the third assumption, a set of initial values of of rebars, the one that requires the minimum movement of rebars can be
design variables can be achieved by considering even distribution x0. A identified, reducing on-site rebar bending work and improving the
clash index Ic is defined to describe the severity of the clash. buildability of rebar design, which also comply with the DfMA concept.
The objective of clash avoidance problem is to check whether this is
an unsolvable clash and find the best clash resolution that will not 3.3.2. Graph dataset preparation
deviate the rebars from their initial positions too much. The objective More than one hundred RC joints from real-life projects were
function and constraints can be expressed as follows. investigated and information was collected following the formulation in
min y = F(x) = (f1 (x), f2 (x)) Section 3.3.1. The design variables in the collected cases were changed
f1 (x) = Ic within customized and reasonable ranges to expand the dataset. Then
f2 (x) = σ (x, x0) the EGA is adopted as optimization algorithm to solve all the cases in the
s.t. x(1: m) ≥ smin (bound)
∑m ∑ dataset. For each case, the final result will be a dummy value indicating
1 x(k) + smin + Dc ≤ wc − 2 * ds, c (constraint)
x(m + 1) ≥ cc + ds,c + Dc(1) (bound) whether unsolvable clash exists. When clash index Ic can decrease to
x(m + 2: m + n) ≥ smin (bound) 0 during the evolutionary process, it means no clash exist or all the
∑m+n ∑
m+1x(k) + Db ≤ wc − cc − ds, c − Dc(1) (constraint) clashes can be solved, and vice versa. Finally, a dataset with 3000 clash
diagnosis cases was established for training the CD-GNN.

For given rebar designs, clash-free layout may not be unique, as

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M. Li et al. Automation in Construction 146 (2023) 104677

Number of Spans 1500 unsolvable clashes and 1500 solvable clashes. It is split into two
1 2 3 4 parts with a ratio of 80% training set and 20% testing set, and fed to the
200 GNN. The optimizer used is Adam optimization algorithm [45], and the
175 GA learning rate is set as 0.002.
EGA
Computation Time/s

150 GNN-GA 3.4. Checking and optimization

125
100 Since the essence of neural networks is to learn the patterns in the
data, GNN-based rebar design prediction cannot guarantee to meet all
75 the code-stipulated requirements such as required steel area and spacing
50 requirements. Therefore, design checking and further optimization are
necessary for the initial design proposed by GNN. In this paper, a hybrid
25
mechanism (which is denoted as GNN-EGA) is proposed to optimized the
0 rebar design provided by GNN, as shown in Fig. 13. The initial design is
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
passed to a metaheuristic algorithm for optimization, and the solution
Number of Variables
space is set as the neighbor of the initial design. Code-stipulated re­
Fig. 17. Efficiency comparison among GA, EGA and GNN-GA. quirements are checked during the process of optimization. Compared to
Note: The algorithm is executed on a laptop with 64-bit system, which includes using metaheuristic algorithm along in previous work, the hybrid
one CPU of Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7300HQ @2.50 GHZ and a RAM of 8 GB. mechanism makes good use of the experience from previous design
cases, which markedly narrows down the solution space and thereby
improves the computation efficiency.
Table 1
Computational time (in second) of GA, EGA and GNN-EGA. 4. Experimental results
1-span 2-span 3-span 4-span
4.1. Details of training
AVG STD AVG STD AVG STD AVG STD

GA 2.16 0.25 9.81 0.78 28.43 3.64 60.20 6.41

4.1.1. Training of RDP-GNN
EGA 3.41 1.06 22.70 5.46 88.12 8.35 195.89 15.44
GNN-EGA 0.78 0.09 2.17 0.47 4.28 2.29 7.23 1.34 The training process of the RDP-GNN is shown in Fig. 14. Expect for
accuracy of prediction, another indicator called “closeness” is defined in
Note: AVG refers to average value of computational time, while STD refers to
this paper, which counts those predictions that are close to the ground
standard deviation.
truth within a customized value. In this paper, those predictions with a
difference less than 1 are counted for rebar number prediction, while
3.3.3. The CD-GNN model architecture those predictions with a difference less than 1 grade are counted for
The CD-GNN is to judge whether a joint with given rebar layouts has rebar diameter prediction. As shown in Fig. 14 (a) and (b), within 1500
unsolvable clashes, which can be regarded as a binary classification task. epochs, the accuracy and closeness of bar number prediction reach
The model architecture of CD-GNN is shown in Fig. 12. Starting from a 63.24% and 100.00%, respectively, while the accuracy and closeness of
joint graph representation, GAT convolutional layers and fully- bar diameter prediction go up to 79.77% and 99.36%. The accuracy of
connected layers with activation functions are applied to aggregate predicting both bar number and diameter is 54.18% while the closeness
the information for clash classification. Finally, a softmax layer is used to is 99.36%, as shown in Fig. 14 (c).
calculate the possibility of two classes – unsolvable and solvable.
The dataset constructed in Section 3.3.2 has 3000 cases including

Fig. 18. 4-story RC frame structure subject to uniform floor load and uniform line load.

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M. Li et al. Automation in Construction 146 (2023) 104677

Fig. 19. Comparison of the rebar designs.

Fig. 20. Comparison of the rebar designs (an example of a two-span continuous beam).

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M. Li et al. Automation in Construction 146 (2023) 104677

4.1.2. Training of CD-GNN For example, in Fig. 19(a), the actual steel area of two 32-mm-diamter
The training process of the CD-GNN is shown in Fig. 15. As shown in rebars is only 1608 mm2, which is less than the required steel area.
Fig. 15(a), the accuracies of classification go up to more than 90% for Fig. 19(b) and Fig. 20(b) show that by applying metaheuristic algorithm
both training and testing datasets. The confusion matrix is shown in to those designs from GNN for design checking and further optimization,
Fig. 15(b). CD-GNN achieves higher accuracy (95.47%) on unsolvable the optimal solution can be achieved.
clashes than solvable clashes (92.47%), meaning that it is more sensitive
to those unsolvable clashes and tends to have better performance. This is 5. Conclusions and future work
beneficial to the rebar design in practice, since ignoring an unsolvable
clash could do more harm than a solvable clash. This paper proposes an automatic clash-free rebar design optimiza­
tion approach with high computational efficiency using GNN and EGA.
4.2. Evaluation of computational efficiency The framework using GNN for rapid clash-free rebar detailing design is
presented, and key modules for graph construction and GNN applica­
The comparison of the EGA, traditional GA, and the GA-HJ devel­ tions are developed. The graph representations of rebar layouts in both
oped in [9] is presented in Fig. 16 with an example of a 3-span contin­ elements and joints are elaborated with examples, which lays down the
uous beam. As shown in Fig. 16(a), compared to traditional GA, EGA can foundation of future research on rebar using graph-based techniques.
converge to the optimal solution much faster, while GA may be stuck in Besides, the implementation details are introduced, especially for the
the local optimum. This is why EGA or GA-HJ is employed for the rebar GNN-based rebar design proposal and the GNN-based rebar clash diag­
design optimization rather than GA. Fig. 16(b) shows the number of nosis. An illustrative example is provided, showing that the proposed
exploratory moves that improve or not improve the fitness of an indi­ approach can generate practical rebar layouts with no clash that are
vidual, and among 4872 exploratory moves, only 913 moves improve comparable to those generated by metaheuristic algorithms. The appli­
the fitness of an individual, which indicates the necessity of cutting cations of GNN overcome the drawbacks of using metaheuristic algo­
down unprofitable moves. In this regard, EGA satisfies the need, which rithms in the previous study and improves the efficiency of design
reduces the number of exploratory moves from 11,760 required by GA- optimization and clash diagnosis. Moreover, this paper verifies the
HJ to 4872, saving more than 50% of computation time consumed by feasibility of employing deep learning techniques to accumulate previ­
exploratory moves. In a word, EGA achieves high robustness with ous design experience in the field of rebar design. Sub-optimal rebar
relatively less computational time, and is more appropriate for the design can be provided immediately by a pre-trained network, which
searching of optimal solution. markedly narrows down the solution space for post-processing algo­
However, it is worth noting that the computation time of either GA or rithms. A metaheuristic algorithm called EGA is then applied to check
EGA is unacceptable for rebar design in real projects with thousands of and further optimize the design. This hybrid mechanism shows enor­
elements. That is why GNN is employed in this paper to achieve rapid mous potential for practical use in the industry.
rebar design. Fig. 14 shows that the closeness of both bar number and While the results from the illustrative examples are promising and
diameter predictions can approach 100%, which lays the foundation of encouraging, the developed approach has three major limitations.
using metaheuristic algorithm for further design optimization and Firstly, though the method in this paper is generic and expandable, only
checking. It means that the optimal solution could be found by searching one-layer rebar layouts are considered for illustration. Secondly, this
the neighbor of the design provided by RDP-GNN instead of the whole paper has not evaluated the clash diagnosis approach for different types
solution space. In this paper, GA and EGA are applied to optimize the of joints except beam-column joints. Last but not least, this paper mainly
initial rebar design and compared to the GNN-EGA in term of compu­ focuses on RC frame structures with more attentions to the structural
tational efficiency, and the results are shown in Fig. 17 and Table 1. design of RC beams and columns. The approaches can be enhanced by
Fig. 17 and Table 1 show that integrating GNN can save about incorporating the design optimization of slabs, shear walls, and etc.
75–90% of computational time required by EGA for beams with which would further prompt their applicability for the rebar design of
different spans, and the time saving become more remarkable as the other types of RC structures.
number of variables/spans increases.
Declaration of Competing Interest
4.3. Illustrative example
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
A two-story RC frame structure (Fig. 18(a)) is used to illustrate the interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
proposed DfMA-oriented approach, and the structural layout is shown in the work reported in this paper.
Fig. 18(b). The uniform floor dead load is assumed to be 3.0 kN/m2,
while uniform floor live load is assumed to be 2.5 kN/m2 and 5.0 kN/m2 Data availability
for the first and the second floor, respectively. Besides, uniform line load
of 20 kN/m is assigned to all beams. The concrete grades are assumed as The authors are unable or have chosen not to specify which data has
C40 for columns and C30 for beams and slabs. The assumed sections for been used.
columns and beams are 400 × 400 and 300 × 500 (mm × mm),
respectively, while the assumed slab thickness is 150 mm. The rebar unit Acknowledgements
price is assumed to be 4500 HK$/ton, while the unit labor cost for rebar
installation is assumed as 2500 HK$/man-day. The available diameters The authors would like to acknowledge the support by the Hong
are assumed as 16, 20, 25, 32, 40 for longitudinal rebars and 8, 10, 12 for Kong Construction Industry Council, Grant No. CIC19EG03. Any opin­
transverse rebars. Hong Kong COP2013 [46] is used in this example to ions and findings are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect
illustrate the proposed approach, though it can be adopted for building the views of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Council.
codes in other regions.
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