Static Stress Redesign of Plates by Large Admissible Perturbations

The purpose of this paper is to develop further the large admissible perturbation (LEAP) methodology to solve the static stress redesign problem for shell elements. The static stress general perturbation equation, which expresses the unknown stresses of the objective structure in terms of the baseline structure stresses, is derived first. This equation depends on the redesign variables for each element or group of elements, namely, the plate thickness. LEAP enables the designer to redesign a structure to achieve specifications on modal properties, static displacements, forced response amplitudes, and static stresses. LEAP is implemented in code RESTRUCT, which postprocesses the finite element analysis FEA results of the baseline structure. Changes on the order of 100% in the above performance particulars and in redesign variables can be achieved without repetitive FEAs. Several numerical applications on a simple plate and an offshore tower are used to verify the effectiveness of the LEAP algorithm for stress redesign.