Simultaneous cost and weight minimization of composite-stiffened panels under compression and shear

An approach is presented to determine the part configuration that minimizes the cost and weight of composite-stiffened panels under combined compression and shear loads. The stiffened panel is designed so that no overall, bay, or stiffener buckling occurs under the applied loads. Skin and stiffener material failure conditions and manufacturing constraints are also imposed. The stiffened panel cost and weight are minimized for a variety of stiffener cross-sectional shapes. A set of near-optimum (in a Pareto sense) configurations is determined. The final optimum configuration is selected from this set by minimizing a weight and cost penalty function.