On the design of some particular orthotropic plates with non-standard ply orientations

This paper deals with the design of thin orthotropic plates exhibiting requ ired stiffness properties. An optimization programme based on the well-know n gradient method is used to obtain stacking sequences in which lamination parameters are very close to a set of target lamination parameters. Some ex amples are studied. The stacking sequences found are not symmetric while th e coupling matrix is zero and the ply angles are not standard.