An intelligent computational approach for design optimization of stiffened engineering structures

This paper has proposed an additive design method for the design of stiffening topology of load-bearing structures in a growth manner. The idea of the method is drawn from the observation that branching structures in nature (e.g., leaf venation) can effectively support a relatively large structure or perfuse a relatively large region. The excellent performance of branching structures is considered as a result of their adaptive growth with respect to the environmental conditions and their configuration features of branching and hierarchy. To apply the principle of adaptive growth to stiffener layout design, a mathematical model for growth simulation is constructed. Based on this, an evolutionary algorithm is developed to implement the adaptive growth of stiffeners. A numerical treatment called “stiffness transforming operation” is introduced to enable stiffeners to grow along arbitrary directions and thus form optimized stiffener layouts. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified with numerical examples.