Material-orientation optimization for tailoring thermal deformation of laminated composite shell structures using a parameter-free approach

抄録

In this study, we present a material-orientation optimization method for tailoring the thermal displacements of laminated composite shell structures to required target values. The square displacement error norm between the displacements and the target values is minimized by varying the distributed anisotropic material orientation of each layer. The optimum design problem is formulated as a distributed-parameter, or a design parameterization-free optimization problem, and the sensitivity function with respect to the material orientation variation is theoretically derived based on the variational method. The optimal material orientation variation is determined by the H¹ gradient method with Poisson’s equation, where the sensitivity function is applied as the Robin condition to vary and optimize the material orientation distribution. Then, the optimal material orientation variation is determined as the temperature distribution by the Poisson’s equation, which ensures the continuous material distribution. The optimal design examples show that the proposed optimization method can effectively produce the optimum material orientation with a smooth curvilinear distribution for tailoring thermal or static deformation of a laminated composite shell structure.