Abstract

This talk will be about shell design optimization process. It will briefly provide background theories and some numerical results obtained from research works on the analysis and design optimization of shell structures. Various tools developed and utilized for the shell design optimization will be mentioned. The tools include computer aided geometric design definition, automatic mesh generation, finite element analysis, design sensitivity analysis and searching methods. In addition, some attention will be given to the topology optimization technique which is generally required to integrate the individual design optimization process. Each process is implemented as an individual design optimization simulation code and throughly tested with various design optimization problems. We found that design optimization techniques can enormously enhance the performance of shells with the same amount of the material and can be effectively used to design new shell structures.