Two-pheromone ant colony optimization to design dispersed laminates for aeronautical structural applications

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to find out the effect of using non-conventional fiber orientations (orientations not limited to 0°, ±45° and 90°) to improve the composite material response. The Ant Colony Algorithm is used to optimize the stacking sequence for biaxial tension and compression loading condition under strength constraints. Moreover, a modified algorithm (two-pheromone algorithm) is used to design a fully dispersed laminate. Results show that dispersed laminates can improve the critical buckling load by up to 8% for the biaxial compression loading case. With respect to the biaxial tensile loading condition, the results show that the matrix cracking failure index can be decreased up to 100% and the fiber tensile failure index can be decreased by 40% using the two pheromone formulation

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innóvacion under the Project MAT2009-07918. The first author would like to thank Generalitat de Catalunya for the FI Pre-Doctorate Grant 2010FI_B00756 and the BE Research Stay Grant 2010_BE_01002