A Two-Stage Genetic Algorithm for Molding Parameters Optimization for Minimized Residual Stresses in Composite Laminates During Curing

The residual stress generated during the curing process of composite structures will seriously reduce the material performance. This paper presents a two-stage genetic algorithm (GA) procedure to inversely determine the optimal molding parameters that minimize residual stresses. In our proposed two-stage GA procedure, a finite element model for Multiphysics simulation is first created to compute the residual stresses of the composite laminated plate for a given temperature curve. The FEM model is then modulated by an improved GA with the residual stresses of the plate as the objective function. The improved GA is called in two-stages: the first stage determines a set of likelihoods of the modeling parameters around which the "optimal" parameters may reside. The 2nd stage zooms-in the areas centered by these likelihoods, which finds molding parameters that minimize the residual stresses. The results show that the proposed two-stage genetic algorithm is more efficient than the traditional genetic algorithm.