Blending Methods for Composite Laminate Optimization

Composite panel structure optimization is commonly decomposed into panel optimization subproblems, with specified local loads, resulting in manufacturing incompatibilities between adjacent panel designs. Using genetic algorithms to optimize local panel stacking sequences allows panel populations of stacking sequences to evolve in parallel and send migrants to adjacent panels, so as to blend the local panel designs globally. The blending process is accomplished using the edit distance between individuals of a population and the set of migrants from adjacent panels. The objective function evaluating the fitness of designs is modified according to the severity of mismatches detected between neighboring populations. This lays the ground work for natural evolution to a blended global solution without leaving the paradigm of genetic algorithms. An additional method proposed here for constructing globally blended panel designs uses a parallel decomposition antithetical to that of earlier work. Rather than performing concurrent panel genetic optimizations, a single genetic optimization is conducted for the entire structure with the parallelism solely within the fitness evaluations. A guide based genetic algorithm approach is introduced to exclusively generate and evaluate valid globally blended designs, utilizing a simple master-slave parallel implementation, implicitly reducing the size of the problem design space and increasing the quality of discovered local optima.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Adams, David Bruce

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Watson, Layne T.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Allison, Donald C. S.
• Gürdal, Zafer

• Parallel Computing
• Combinatorial Optimization
• Genetic Algorithms
• Blending
• Decomposition
• Composite Laminates

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08282002-112646

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/34815