Min-max formulation for heterogeneous composite plates with thermal residual stresses

Abstract

Optimal elastic buckling loads of spatially heterogeneous composite plates formed from a series of subregions is considered. Because of the plate heterogeneity thermal residual stresses develop during the cool down from the processing temperature to the operation temperature. An optimization strategy is implemented in order to take advantage of the non-zero thermal stress moments and to avoid convergence to local maxima. A min-max formulation is used to find the optimal design under the most dangerous set of admissible thermal and mechanical loads. The resulting designs are optimal within a certain class of parametrized loads as opposed to the traditional optimality under fixed loads.