For the rst time, an investigation of stiffened and unstiffened multilayered composite plates has been conducted to determine the material property parameters of the plate as well as the stiffener from numerically simulated experimental modal data and nite element predictions, using model updating techniques. The problem is formulated as a global minimization of the error function, de ned by the difference in undamped eigenvalues as well as mode shapes, as predicted from the nite element modeling compared to that obtained experimentally. The parameter estimation problem is solved using an iterative gradient-based minimization algorithm, which can start from any randomly selected set of initial parameters. The position, physical properties, and orientation of stiffeners create considerable variations in the modal properties as compared to the bare plates of similar construction. This makes each of the stiffened plate problems rather unique. A few simulated examples are presented, and the methodology is found to be robust, even in the presence of random noise.
Nomenclaturea = amplitude of noise boundl(i ) = lower bound of the variable boundu(i ) = upper bound of the variable E = Young's modulus of a lamina E T = total error term in the objective function E1 = Young's modulus of a lamina of the plate in the longitudinal material direction E2 = Young's modulus of a lamina of the plate in transverse material direction E S1 = Young's modulus of the lamina of the stiffener in longitudinal material direction E S2 = Young's modulus of the lamina of the stiffener in transverse material direction E x , E u , E p = error terms for frequency, mode shape, and internal penalty, respectively G12, G13, G23 = shear modulus of the lamina of the plate G S12 = in-plane shear modulus of the lamina of the stiffener M = number of measured modes ncons = number of parameters with constraints nused = number of modes considered P L i = lower bound of the i th parameter P U i = upper bound of the i th parameter P ¤ i = value of the i th parameter P R12= in-plane Poisson's ratio of the lamina of the plate P S12 = in-plane Poisson's ratio of the lamina of the stiffener r = uniformly distributed sequence of random numbers between ¡ 1 and +1 rr(i ) = constant for evaluating internal penalty W x , W u , W p = weighting factors of frequency, mode shape, and internal penalty, respectively X = noise-free reference data X ¤ = noisy data (frequency or component of eigenvector) x(i ) = i th parameter g = deterministic design allowable