Discrete Material Buckling Optimization of Laminated Composite Structures considering "Worst" Shape Imperfections

Robust design of laminated composite structures is considered in this work. Because laminated composite structures are often thin walled, buckling failure can occur prior to material failure, making it desirable to maximize the buckling load. However, as a structure always contains imperfections these must be included into the optimization, otherwise the imperfection sensitivity of the structure can be increased through optimization. To minimize the imperfection sensitivity of the structure the so-called Recurrence Optimization is applied. This approach uses a sequence of laminate optimizations and “worst” shape imperfection optimizations to design robust composite structures. The approach is demonstrated on an U-profile where the imperfection sensitivity is monitored, and based on the example it can be concluded that robust designs can be obtained.