Static Analysis and Optimization of stiffened plates under pressure loading

Resumo

In this work, the Exhaustive Search Method (ESM) was used to optimize a plate structure with stiffeners.
The main goal is to establish a numerical simulation procedure in order to identify the optimal geometry for
stiffened steel plates, where the objective function to be minimized is the maximum displacement, keeping the
total reference volume constant. The search process is allowed to vary the number, thickness, and height of the
stiffeners. The optimization and analysis of mechanical behavior were performed by ESM combined with ANSYS
Mechanical APDL software which is based on the Finite Element Method (FEM). The stiffened plates were
calculated to transform 40% of the total volume into stiffeners. The optimal geometry resulted in a reduction of
98.34% in the maximum displacement if compared to the reference plate showing the good results obtained by the
proposed methodology.