MINIMUM-WEIGHT DESIGN OF A STIFFENED PANEL VIA PANDA2 AND EVALUATION OF THE OPTIMIZED PANEL VIA STAGS

A minimum-weight design of a T-stiffened panel is found with the PANDA2 program. The panel, subjected to axial compression, in-plane shear, and normal pressure, is designed for service in its locally postbuckled state. A program called STAGSMODEL has been written for transforming output from PANDA2 to input for STAGS, a general-purpose nonlinear finite element code. STAGS is then used to evaluate the optimum design- Agreement between results obtained with PANDA2 and STAGS is reasonable for this very complex, very nonlinear problem. Therefore, PANDA2 qualifies as a preliminary design tool for panels operating in their locally postbuckled states.