Optimal design of plates for shear buckling

This paper is concerned with the structural optimization problem of maximizing the shear buckling load of rectangular plates for a given volume of material. Optimality conditions are first derived via variational calculus, and a double cosine thickness varying plate and a hybrid double sine thickness varying plate are then fine tuned in a one parameter optimization search using a home coded program for an analysis that utilizes the Rayleigh-Ritz method until convergence. Results indicate an increase of 33% in capacity for an orthotropic plate having 50% of the fibers in the 0 degrees direction and the other 50% in the 90 degrees direction. (C) 1997 Civil-Comp Ltd and Elsevier Science Ltd.