Effect of loading and lamination parameters on the optimum design of laminated plates

This paper illustrates the effect of loading conditions and lamination parameters on the optimum design of the laminated composite plates. Optimum design procedure based on the flexibility criterion is presented in this paper. The objective is to determine the optimum thickness of the laminate layers and its optimum orientations without exhibiting any failure. The finite element method based on Mindlin plate theory is used in conjunction with an optimization method in order to determine the optimum design. Newmark implicit time integration scheme is used to discretize the time domain and calculate the transient response of the laminated plate. Exterior penalty method is exploited as a constrained minimization technique. For this purpose, four numerical examples are presented to figure out the effects of dynamic loading profile, boundary conditions, number of layers, and degree of orthotropy on the optimum weight design.