Author(s)

Samir V. Amiouny & Suong V. Hoa

Abstract

A heuristic is proposed for a problem that occurs in the design of thick composite cylinders: the selection of the angles of wrap of all the layers forming a cylinder for given material properties and layer thicknesses. The heuristic consists of a local search algorithm that improves on a given initial design by modifying the angle of a single layer in each iteration. Each design is evaluated by computing a safety factor. Computational experience with the heuristic is presented and discussed. 1 Introduction The design of a composite cylinder involves the selection of the ma- terial (fiber and resin), the determination of the number of layers tt, and the selection of the angles of wrap for the layers. This work concentrates on the latter issue: for a given selection of material and number of layers, th

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