OPTIMATION OF MATERIAL PROPERTIES FOR MINDLIN PLATE DESIGN

As an extension of recent work by Bendsoe et al. (1993) on the simultaneous optimization of material and structure, the optimal design of Mindlin plates is considered. Material properties are represented as elements of the unrestricted set of positive semi-definite constitutive tensors of the plate, the objective is the compliance and a resource constraint is measured as the 2-norm of the constitutive tensors is included. The optimized material properties are derived analytically. The optimization of the layout of the material leads to a sizing problem of structural optimization involving a non-linear, non-smooth elasticity analysis.