Optimum design of shell structures with random geometric, material and thickness imperfections

The optimum design of isotropic shell structures with random initial geometric, material and thickness imperfections is investigated in this paper and a robust and efficient methodology is presented for treating such problems. For this purpose, the concept of an initial “imperfect” structure is introduced involving not only geometric deviations of the shell structure from its perfect geometry but also a spatial variability of the modulus of elasticity as well as of the thickness of the shell. An efficient reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) formulation is proposed. The objective function is considered to be the weight of the structure while both deterministic and probabilistic constraints are taken into account. The overall probability of failure is taken as the global probabilistic constraint for the optimization procedure. Numerical results are presented for a cylindrical panel, demonstrating the efficiency as well as the applicability of the proposed methodology in obtaining rational optimum designs of imperfect shell-type structures.