The third application is stiffened panel optimization, including the size and placement optimization for the blade stiffeners, subject to buckling and stress constraints.
The present work uses NURBS for the panel and stiffener representation. The mesh for the panel is
generated using DistMesh, a triangulation algorithm in MATLAB. A NASTRAN/MATLAB
interface is developed to automatically transfer the data between the analysis and opti-
mization processes respectively. The optimization consists of minimizing the weight of the
stiffened panel with design variables being the thickness of the plate and height and width
of the stiffener as well as the placement of the stiffeners subjected to buckling and stress
constraints under in-plane normal/shear and out-plane pressure loading conditions.