MULTIPOINT APPROXIMATIONS - COMPARISONS USING STRUCTURAL SIZE, CONFIGURATION AND SHAPE DESIGN

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of rec ently developed multipoint function approximations in the context of s tructural size, configuration and shape optimization. The developments include approximations built using just two points and also more than two-point information of optimization iterations. Intervening variabl es are used to control the nonlinearity of the approximations. Several structural optimization problems with stress, displacement and buckli ng constraints are used to demonstrate the validity and accuracy of th e multipoint approximations. These examples include the size optimizat ion of a 40 member frame, the configuration design of a 25-bar space t russ and the shape design of a torque arm and a plate with a hole.