Frequency optimization of laminated composite plates

Abstract

Laminated fibrous composite plates are finding a wide range of applications in structural design,<br><br>especially for their light weight and high stiffness and strength. In this article, a genetic algorithm based<br><br>optimum design method is presented to maximize fundamental frequency of laminated composite plates<br><br>under any combination of the three classical edge conditions. The first natural frequencies of laminated<br><br>composite plates were obtained from modal analysis of plates using the finite element method.<br><br>Furthermore, first natural frequencies of the plate were defined as fitness function in Genetic Algorithm.<br><br>Genetic Algorithm, which is one of the methods inspire from nature, can successfully optimize problems<br><br>with discrete variables. The results from the proposed method show that the Genetic Algorithm predicted<br><br>successfully the optimal layer sequences without yielding a local optimum.