Composite aeroelastic tailoring design based on lamination parameters

Composite laminate modeling based on lamination parameters was fulfilled and the parameter input problem of lamination parameters with Nastran was solved. Also, the feasible region of lamination parameters was derived and supplemented with rule of minimum amount of fibers. With the two aspects, an optimization method for composite aeroelastic tailoring based on lamination parameters and Nastran was proposed. First, laminate thickness and lamination parameters were as design variables, with constraints of lamination parameters constraints and structure behavior constraints including strength, stiffness, flutter speed and divergence speed constraints. Second, the inverse problem of optimal lamination parameters to real laminate configuration was solved as a discrete numerical optimization problem just with constraints of composite manufacturing constraints. Because the lamination parameters were functions of laminate thickness and stacking sequence, the optimization method with lamination parameters as design variables could obtain larger design freedom compared with the conventional method with layer thicknesses as design variables. Finally, a cantilever plate numerical example with aeroelastic constraints was used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Results show that the optimal laminate configuration obtained by the proposed method satisfies the manufacturing constraints with lighter mass.