Optimal design of laminated composite stiffened panels of symmetric and balancedlayup with different number of T-shape stiffeners is investigated and presented.The stiffened panels are simply supported and subjected to uniform biaxialcompressive load. In the optimization for the maximum buckling load withoutweight penalty, the panel skin and the stiffened laminate stacking sequence,thickness and the height of the stiffeners are chosen as design variables. Theoptimization is carried out by applying an ant colony algorithm (ACA) with theply contiguous constraint taken into account. The finite strip method isemployed in the buckling analysis of the stiffened panels. The results showsthat the buckling load increases dramatically with the number of stiffeners atfirst, and then has only a small improvement after the number of stiffenersreaches a certain value. An optimal layup of the skin and stiffener laminate hasalso been obtained by using the ACA. The methods presented in this paper shouldbe applicable to the design of stiffened composite panels in similar loadingconditions.
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