AN EVOLUTIONARY METHOD FOR OPTIMIZATION OF PLATE BUCKLING RESISTANCE

Optimization of plate buckling resistance is very complicated, because the in-plane stress resultants in the prebuckled state of a plate are functions of thickness distribution. This paper discusses the problem of finding the optimum thickness distribution of isotropic plate stru ctures, with a given volume and layout, that would maximise the buckli ng load. A simple numerical method using the finite-element analysis i s presented to obtain the optimum thickness distribution. Optimum desi gns of compression-loaded rectangular plates with different boundary c onditions and plate aspect ratios are obtained by using the proposed m ethod. Optimum designs from earlier studies and the methods of bucklin g analysis used to attain these results are discussed and compared wit h the designs from the proposed method. This paper also examines the r eliability of the optimality criterion generally used for plate buckli ng optimization, which is based on the uniform strain energy density. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.