Lamination Design Optimization for Continuous Fiber Reinforced Composites of Variable Thicknesses

Due to the high specific strength and stiffness, the use of continuous fiber reinforced composites instead of traditional metal materials to achieve structural lightweight has been widely considered by designers. However, the structural complexity brings great challenges to the design and optimization of composite lamination. Aimed at the problem of multiple constraints in the design of aviation composite laminates, the ply information of the structure was accurately expressed with gradually constructed design variables. Based on the classical genetic algorithm framework and the characteristics of all design variables, the genetic operators in the lamination optimization algorithm were defined, and the repair strategy was introduced to ensure that each generation of solutions could satisfy the design constraints and be distributed in the feasible region. Finally, the elite reservation strategy was used to improve the local optimization ability of the algorithm, which can reduce the computation cost of the lamination design of complex composite structures. Through the resolution of the classical benchmark problem and the comparison with the existing optimization results, the global and local optimization ability of the proposed lamination optimization algorithm was verified. The work provides theoretical supports for the optimization of composite lamination design in engineering practice.