A simulated annealing approach for optimizing composite structures blended with multiple stacking sequence tables

This paper presents an approach to design composite panels via multiple stacking sequence tables (SST) such that the continuity constraints between adjacent regions are maintained. Traditional SST methods determine all the stacking sequences with only one SST, but this simplification limits the design option space. To increase the design freedom, this research utilizes multiple SSTs to blend the stacking sequences of a laminated structure. In the design process of the proposed approach, the monotonicity property of predicted laminate thicknesses is employed to determine the number of SSTs, and an SST rebuilding method is developed to satisfy the blending constraints. In the implementation of the simulated annealing algorithm for solving the optimal design problem, an SST difference code is introduced to represent feasible solutions, and a particular neighborhood structure is proposed to sufficiently explore the solutions in design space. Finally, the 18-region benchmark problem is chosen to validate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. The results reveal that, compared with other existing methods, the proposed method can generate manufacturable solutions with lower weights under the symmetry and balance constraints.