Design of Laminated Plates for Maximum Stiffness

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Abstract
An optimization procedure is proposed for the design of laminated fiber-reinforced plates having midplane symmetry and subject to flexure. Strain energy is taken as the objective function, while the fiber directions and/or layer thicknesses represent the design variables. Deformation analysis is carried out using the Rayleigh-Ritz method. A quasi-Newton procedure is used for the optimization, with the initial point obtained by a random jump technique. Numerical results are presented for T300/5208 graphite/ epoxy laminates with equal thickness layers, resting on simple supports, and subject to either distributed or discrete loading. For the situations considered it is found that ap plication of the optimization procedure can lead to a substantial decrease in the max imum plate deflection.