Optimal truss plates

Sandwich plates comprised of truss cores faced with either planar trusses or solid sheets are optimally designed for minimum weight subject to prescribed combinations of bending and transverse shear loads. Motivated by recent advances in manufacturing possibilities, attention is focussed on plates with truss elements and faces made from a single material. The optimized plates are compared with similarly optimized honeycomb core sandwich plates fashioned from the same material. Sandwich plates with solid sheet faces and truss cores are highly efficient from a weight standpoint. These are also studied for their performance as compression panels. Optimized compression panels of this construction compare favorably with the most efficient stringer stiffened plates. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.