RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF DISCRETE MATERIAL OPTIMIZATION OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

This work will give a quick summary of recent developments of the Discrete Material Optimization approach for structural optimization of laminated composite structures. This approach can be seen as a multi-material topology optimization approach for selecting the best ply material and number of plies in a laminated composite structure. The conceptual combinatorial design problem is relaxed to a continuous problem such that well-established gradient based optimization techniques can be applied, and the optimization problem is solved on basis of interpolation schemes with penalization. The different interpolation schemes used are described, and it is briefly outlined how design rules/manufacturing constraints can be included in the optimization. The approach has been demonstrated for a number of global design criteria like mass, compliance, buckling load factors, etc., but recent work makes it possible also to include local criteria such as strength criteria in the formulations. This is illustrated by structural optimization of a corner hinged laminated plate in this paper, and at ICCM20 it will also be demonstrated for optimization of a main spar from a wind turbine blade.