Lightweight design of composite laminated structures with frequency constraint

This paper describes a method for lightweight design of composite laminated structures using optimization technique. The lightweight design optimization model aims to minimize the mass of the composite laminated structures with the fundamental frequency constraint. The design variables are the fibre volume fractions and fibre orientations of the layers. The first derivatives of the weight and frequencies with respect to design variables are computed. The lightweight design optimization model is converted into a series of linear constrain optimization problems using the interior point penalty function method. The sensitivity of the penalty function is calculated using the sensitivity information of the weight and frequencies. An optimization procedure based on the gradient projection algorithm is proposed. Finally, the lightweight designs of two composite laminated plates are performed by using the proposed optimization procedure. The merits of the proposed procedure are also discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.