Citation:
Wei Wang, Shijun Guo, Nan Chang, Feng Zhao, Wei Yang. A modified ant colony algorithm for the stacking sequence optimisation of a
rectangular laminate. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, Volume 41, Issue 5, May 2010, pp.711-720
Abstract:
This paper presents a modified Ant Colony Algorithm (ACA) called multi-city-
layer ant colony algorithm (MCLACA). The research attention is focused on
improving the computational efficiency in the stacking sequence optimisation of
a laminated composite plate for maximum buckling load. A new operator, the so-
called two point interchange, is introduced and proved to be effective for
reducing the convergence time and enhancing the robustness in the MCLACA
performance. The laminate optimisation is subject to balanced and symmetric
layup with ply contiguous and strength constraints. In order to assess the
MCLACA performance, a simply supported rectangular laminate plate, which was
taken as numerical example in previous research using traditional ACA and
genetic algorithm (GA) is chosen as a benchmark case study. Comparing with the
ACA and GA results, it is shown that the presented MCLACA has better performance
in terms of computational efficiency and robustness. To demonstrate the
applicability of the MCLACA to a general case, an additional example of laminate
optimisation has been taken with more design variables and five different
boundary conditions by finite element analysis.