Open Access

ARTICLE

Buckling Optimization of Curved Grid Stiffeners through the Level Set Based Density Method

by Zhuo Huang, Ye Tian, Yifan Zhang, Tielin Shi, Qi Xia^*

State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

* Corresponding Author: Qi Xia. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Structural Design and Optimization)

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2024, 140(1), 711-733. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2024.045411

Received 25 August 2023; Accepted 15 December 2023; Issue published 16 April 2024

Abstract

Stiffened structures have great potential for improving mechanical performance, and the study of their stability is of great interest. In this paper, the optimization of the critical buckling load factor for curved grid stiffeners is solved by using the level set based density method, where the shape and cross section (including thickness and width) of the stiffeners can be optimized simultaneously. The grid stiffeners are a combination of many single stiffeners which are projected by the corresponding level set functions. The thickness and width of each stiffener are designed to be independent variables in the projection applied to each level set function. Besides, the path of each single stiffener is described by the zero iso-contour of the level set function. All the single stiffeners are combined together by using the p-norm method to obtain the stiffener grid. The proposed method is validated by several numerical examples to optimize the critical buckling load factor.

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Keywords

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