Optimizing the laminates of large composite structures is nowadays well-recognized as having significant benefits in the design of lightweight structural solutions. However, designs based on locally optimized laminates are prone to structural discontinuities and enforcing blending during the optimization is therefore crucial in order to achieve structurally continuous and ready-to-manufacture designs. Bi-step strategies, relying on a continuous gradient-based optimization of lamination parameters followed by a discrete stacking sequence optimization step during which blending is enforced, have been proposed in theliterature. However, significant mismatch between continuous and discrete solutions were observed due to the discrepancies between both design spaces. The present paper highlights the capability of the continuous blending constraints, recently proposed by the authors, in reducing the discrepancies between discrete and continuous solutions. The paper also demonstrates that more realistic optimal continuous designs are achieved thanks to the application of the blending constraints during the aeroelastic optimization of a variable stiffness wing. Additionally, the proposed blending constraints have been applied to NASTRAN SOL 200 showing their ease of implementation in commercial software.
展开▼
机译：如今，众所周知，优化大型复合结构的层压板在设计轻型结构解决方案方面具有显着优势。但是，基于局部优化的层压板的设计易于出现结构间断，因此在优化过程中强制进行混合对于实现结构上连续且易于制造的设计至关重要。在文献中已经提出了两步策略，该策略依赖于基于连续梯度的层压参数优化，然后是离散的堆叠序列优化步骤，在此步骤中强制进行混合。但是，由于两个设计空间之间的差异，在连续解决方案和离散解决方案之间观察到了明显的不匹配。本文着重介绍了作者最近提出的连续混合约束在减少离散和连续解之间的差异方面的能力。本文还表明，由于在变刚度机翼的气动弹性优化过程中应用了混合约束，因此可以实现更现实的最佳连续设计。此外，建议的混合约束已应用于NASTRAN SOL 200，显示了它们在商业软件中的易于实现。
展开▼
