A new nested-niche technique for optimization design of composite laminated structure

Abstract

Optimization design of composite laminated structure has typical features as multimodality and variable-dimension when the ply number is considered as a design variable, the niche technique combined with evolutionary algorithm is an effective method for such problem. In order to get lighter weight, a new nested-niche technique that can consider the diversity of the population in the ply number and the ply orientation successively is proposed in this paper to improve the optimization performance. Performance of the proposed technique is verified by engineering cases, the weight obtained based on the nested-niche technique is 3.32kg, reduced by 25.2% and 11.5% compared with GA and INDE in references. Finally, influence of the inner-niche radius of the technique on the performance is discussed.