Intelligent design of shear wall layout based on graph neural networks

Structural scheme design of shear wall structures is important because it is the first stage that guides the project along its entire structural design process and significantly impacts the subsequent design stages. Design methods for shear wall layouts based on deep generative algorithms have been proposed and achieved some success. However, current generative algorithms rely on pixel images to design shear wall layouts, which have many model parameters and require intensive calculations. Moreover, it is challenging to use pixel image-based methods to reflect the topological characteristics of structures and connect them with the subsequent design stages. The above defects can be effectively solved by representing a shear wall structure in graph data form and adopting graph neural networks (GNNs), which have a robust topological-characteristic-extraction capability. However, there is no existing research using GNN methods in the design of shear wall structures owing to the lack of graph representation methods and high-quality structural graph data for shear walls. Therefore, this study develops an intelligent design method for shear wall layouts based on GNNs. Two graph representation methods for a shear wall structure—graph edge representation and graph node representation—are examined. A data augmentation method for shear wall structures in graph data form is established to enhance the universality of the GNN performance. An evaluation method for both graph representation methods is developed. Case studies show that the shear wall layout designed using the established GNN method is highly similar to the design by experienced engineers.