A sandwich plate with composite faces is optimized with the objective of minimizing the strain energy, which is shown to be directly related with the stiffness of plates. The design variables are the fiber orientation of individual layers of composite faces.
The sandwich plate with composite faces are analyzed by the Rayleigh-Ritz method using trigonometric functions as shape functions. The sandwich plate consists of an anti-plane core, two anisotropic laminated faces. The DFP (Davidon-Fletcher-Powell) method is employed for optimization.
Several numerical results are obtained to showing the effects of aspect ratios, thickness ratios. Optimum solutions are also obtained for sandwich plates with anisotropic core and isotropic core. The optimization results are also obtained to compare the various fiber orientation of face in sandwich plates as design variables.
