Optimization and Blending of Composite Laminates Using Guide based Genetic Algorithms

Adams, David B. and Watson, Layne T. and Gurdal, Zafer and Anderson-Cook, Christine M. (2003) Optimization and Blending of Composite Laminates Using Guide based Genetic Algorithms. Technical Report TR-03-11, Computer Science, Virginia Tech.

Abstract

Composite panel structure optimization is commonly decomposed into panel optimization subproblems, with specified local loads, resulting in manufacturing incompatibilities between adjacent panel designs. A new 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.