Optimal design of composite ChamberCore structures

An optimization procedure has been developed to uniquely and efficiently de termine the "best" local geometry design of a new composite ChamberCore str ucture. This procedure is based on minimization of the total mass of a sing le composite ChamberCore subject to a set of design and stress constraints. The stress constraints are obtained in closed form based on the composite box-beam model for various composite lamination designs and loading conditi ons. The optimization problem statement is constructed and then solved usin g the VMCON optimization program, which is an iterative sequential quadrati c programming (SQP) technique based on Powell's algorithm. The sensitivity of the solution of the optimal geometry to the values of parameters that ch aracterize the structural durability and the failure mechanism is discussed . (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.