OPTIMAL DESIGN OF ELASTIC STRUCTURES FOR MAXIMUM STIFFNESS.

Abstract

The purpose the paper was to establish a general theory of optimal design of elastic structures such that the structure with a given volume would have maximum stiffness. A sufficient condition of optimality was derived from the principle of minimum potential energy. This optimality condition was proven by the variational method to be a necessary one under the condition that the optimal structure has certain continuity and differentiability properties. Physical interpretations of the optimality condition were discussed for problems of beams, plates and trusses. An application of the theory was illustrated in a problem of optimal design of a simply supported circular plate under uniform pressure. Detailed description of the numerical procedure for the solution of the plate problem was presented. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1967
Accession Number
AD0659702

Entities

People

  • N. C. Huang

Organizations

  • University of California, San Diego

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Continuity
  • Energy
  • Potential Energy
  • Stiffness
  • Variational Methods

Readers

  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Structural Dynamics.