Response surface based laminate stacking sequence optimization under stability constraints
S. Nagendra, Sathya N. Gangadharan, Y Fiocca, Sathya N. Gangadharan, Y Fiocca, S. Nagendra · 38th Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference · 1997
The design of composite plates for high strength and low weight applications requires the laminates to be relatively thin and therefore buckling critical. The optimization of composite plates to maximize the buckling load, from a practical applications point of view, becomes a laminate stacking sequence optimization problem. Various methods (like the genetic search, integer programming, etc.) to optimize the stacking sequence in a composite plate have been tried before. The objective of this research paper is to use the response surface methodology to obtain the buckling load for the design of composite laminates subjected to stability constraints by optimizing the laminate stacking sequence (ply orientation angles) using a quadratic polynomial for different boundary conditions. The paper focuses on obtaining the buckling loads of composite plates subjected to boundary conditions where closed form solution is not available (eg. fixed end conditions) from boundary conditions (eg. simply supported) that have closed form solutions, using a Continuous Response Surface Refinement Approach.