Design and Optimization of Fiber-reinforced Composite Laminates Considering Manufacturing Constraints

Abstract

Fiber-reinforced composite laminate has replaced steel to reduce weight of product and satisfy required mechanical properties, simultaneously. However, its weight can be increased more than necessary by experience- and intuition-based design. For optimal design, researchers have tried to minimize weight and maximize stiffness or strength of composite laminates [1]. This paper considered two things more. One is manufacturing constraints [2], which are considered to get manufacturable structure design. The other is thickness variation [3], which is applied to further reduce weight of composite laminate by discretizing composite laminate into many elements and decreasing the number of plies of low-stress elements. Optimization process is described at figure 1. Design objective is weight minimization. Design variable is the number of plies and stacking sequence. Design constraints are stiffness, strength, manufacturing constraints. The ‘try-them-all’ method was applied in which every possible stacking sequence of plies is tried systematically.