Optimum Vibration Design of Fiber Metal Laminated Panels by Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

This paper illustrates the application of the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to the lay-up design of symmetrically fiber metal laminated panels for maximization of fundamental frequency. The design variables are the number of layers, the fiber orientation angles of inner composite layers, edge conditions and panel length/width ratios. The classical laminated plate theory (CLPT) is used to calculate the natural frequencies and the fitness function is computed with a semi-analytical finite strip method which has been developed on the basis of full energy methods. The performance of the PSO is also compared with the simple genetic algorithm and shows the good efficiency of the PSO algorithm. To check the validity, the results are corroborated by comparing with some other stacking sequences.Copyright © 2011 by ASME