NURBS BASED OPTIMIZATION OF VARIABLE STIFNESS COMPOSITE STRUCTURESKaan Cimen and Altan Kayran Variable stiffness composite structure concept is studied since 1972, however this concept is stepped into a new age after the automated fiber placement manufacturing machines are started to be used in industry. In this study a three dimensional (3D) variable stiffness composite structure optimization method is presented. The main difference from previous studies is the definition of the reference lay-up path by Non-uniform Rational B Splines (NURBS) in 3D. The methodology is based on defining a reference path by NURBS and optimizing the NURBS parameters by using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method to minimize the strain energy of the 3D composite structure, which is selected as the objective function the current study. The initial results show that reference lay-up path defined by NURBS is successfully optimized such that the strain energy of the final design is minimized. |