Structural optimization strategies for simple and integrally stiffened plates and shells

Purpose - Shells are widely used structural systems in engineering practice. These structures have been used in the civil, automobile and aerospace industries. Many shells are designed using the finite element analysis through the conventional and costly trial and error scheme. As a more efficient alternative, optimization procedures can be used to design economic and safe structures. Design/methodology/approach - This paper presents developments, integration and applications of reliable and efficient computational tools for the structural optimization of variable thickness plates and free-form shells. Topology, sizing and shape optimization procedures are considered here. They are applied first as isolated subjects. Then these tools are combined to form a robust and reliable fully integrated design optimization, tool to obtain optimum designs. The unique feature is the application of a flexible integrally stiffened plate and shell formulation to the design of stiffened plates and shells. Findings - This work showed the use of different optimization strategies to obtain an optimal design for plates and shells. Both topology optimization (TO) and structural shape optimization procedures were considered. These two optimization applications, as separate procedures produce new designs with a great improvement when compared to the initial designs. However, the combination of stiffening TO and sizing optimization using integrally stiffened shells appears as a more attractive tool to be used. This was illustrated with several examples. Originality/value - This work represents a novel approach to the design of optimally stiffened shells and overcomes the drawbacks of both topology optimization and structural shape optimization procedures when applied individually. Furthermore, the unique use of integrally stiffened shell elements for optimization, unlike conventional shell-stiffening optimization techniques, provided a general and extremely flexible tool.