Intelligent structural design of shear wall residence using physics‐enhanced generative adversarial networks

Abstract Intelligent structural design using generative adversarial networks (GANs) is a revolutionary design approach for building structures. Despite its far‐reaching capability, the data quantity and quality may have limited the performance of such a data‐driven network. This study proposes to enhance the objectiveness of training processes by innovatively introducing a surrogate model, Physics Estimator, that informs the generator by appraising the physical behavior of the generated design. Dual loss functions evaluated by a traditional data‐driven discriminator and the Physics Estimator collaboratively foster the physics‐enhanced GAN architecture. We further develop a structural mechanics model to train and optimize the inherent accuracy of the Physics Estimator. The comparative study suggests that the proposed physics‐enhanced GAN can generate structural designs from architectural drawings and specified design conditions 44% better than a data‐driven design method and 90 times faster than a competent engineer.