Variable Stiffness Laminates are created by spatially varying the fiber orientation resulting in designs that makes use of curved fibers rather than Uni-directional fibers to tailor the properties to design requirement. The advent of automated manufacturing methods such as Automated Fiber Placement and Tailored Fiber Placement has made variable stiffness laminate more realistic and attractive for use in aerospace and automotive sector. Importance of light weight designs in automotive sector has received new interest due to the stringent emissions rules and entry of designs based on alternative energy. Within this context, this thesis intends to create variable stiffness design for an automotive part to investigate the possible improvements in structural responses compared to a design based on conventional laminates. The design is done based on 2D Finite element analysis coupled with a convex optimization that helps to generate steered fiber designs optimized for strength, stiffness and buckling. One of the important load case studied here is the Inertia Relief. Inertia Relief method is a computationally efficient way of analyzing rigid bodies without doing a dynamic analysis. The method was implemented in the finite element framework and the responses from the analysis were taken for optimization.
Final optimization of the structure showed that significant improvement in the objective responses can be achieved by using variable stiffness laminates over a conventional laminate design (UD). The result also implies that reduction in weight can be achieved if a variable thickness optimization is to be done on the model.

Striving to improve structural efficiency the aerospace industry shows increasing interest in variable-stiffness composite laminates. Advanced fiber placement is a hybrid manufacturing technique that offers the flexibility of both filament winding and automated tape laying. With the development of this novel system curved tows can be placed and a spatially variable-stiffness laminate can be designed with continuous changing stiffness from point to point.

The increased design freedom to tailor a structure by in-plane stiffness variation leads to a challenging design optimization problem. A multi-step framework is developed by the aerospace structures and materials department to optimize variable-stiffness laminates. Variable-stiffness laminate design allows for sophisticated designs. Based on this premise it is investigated how such design could improve the structural performance of an engine thrust frame, a structural application that transfers the thrust loads from the rocket engine to the rest of the launch system. The engine thrust frame is subject to cryogenic thermal loads, something not incorporated in the available optimization framework. The goal of this work is to add thermal loads to the laminate analysis routine and to adjust the optimization routine to incorporate thermal influences.

With the thermomechanical optimization framework in place the engine thrust frame is modeled. Conceptual design optimization of the engine thrust frame under thermomechanical loads is performed to increase buckling resistance. A mismatch in the coefficient of thermal expansion is used by the optimal variable-stiffness design. The stiffened areas contract less than the inter-stiffener bay regions. Consequently a stabilizing tensile stress is induced in the prone to buckling bay regions, whereas compressive stresses are distributed to the stiffened areas. Based on the stabilizing thermal stresses and load distribution significant gains in performance are found.

Nonlinear analysis of dynamic problems has become important for modern industrial design applications. The increasing pressure on airlines to decrease fuel costs demands the design of more efficient aircraft. This requires aircraft manufacturing companies to design lighter structural components. The result is the need for more realistic and accurate modelling of critical structural components. Over the years, more powerful finite element discretization methods and improved numerical methods and programming techniques for dynamic analyses of structures have been introduced. Despite these advances and the increase in available computer power, the analysis of nonlinear dynamic problems is yet a computationally demanding task, implying it is very expensive. To reduce the computational time of nonlinear finite element analyses, reduction methods have been developed. These methods have as aim to reduce the number of degrees of freedom, while retaining sufficient accuracy of the solution.

Recently, a new reduction method, applicable to nonlinear static stability problems, has been developed at Delft University of Technology. The aim of this thesis is to extend the reduction method for statics to nonlinear dynamics. This is achieved by using the Hamiltonian formulation to describe the motion of a system. A reduced order model (ROM) is constructed for free vibrations, forced vibrations and damped vibrations, using Hamilton’s equations of motion. These are integrated to obtain the response of the ROM, in terms of displacements and momenta. The displacements of the full finite element model are computed by back-substituting the reduced response into the displacement expansion. The ROM is implemented in a finite element framework.

The ROM is applied to beams, to plates as well as to shells. Overall, good agreement is found between the ROM and Abaqus. The big advantage of the ROM is found when the computational times for beams and plates are compared to that of Abaqus. A drastic reduction in time is observed for the ROM, while still maintaining accurate results. The ROM thus saves valuable computational time.