Hybrid analysis and optimization of hierarchical stiffened plates based on asymptotic homogenization method

As a potential aerospace structural concept, hierarchical stiffened plates under axial compression are characterized by multiple local features, which lead to the buckling analysis and optimization suffering from heavy computational costs, by means of exact Finite Element Method (FEM). Thus, an efficient and simple hybrid framework for the buckling analysis and optimization of hierarchical stiffened plates is presented in this study. Firstly, the skin and minor stiffeners are equivalent to an unstiffened anisotropic plate based on a novel numerical implementation of asymptotic homogenization method (NIAH), which can be easily realized using commercial software as a black box, indicating a strong applicability for rather complicated minor stiffener configurations. Then, the equivalent plate together with major stiffeners can be treated as a hybrid model to be calculated by FEM. Further, a surrogate-based optimization based on this hybrid model is performed. Finally, three illustrative examples are established to demonstrate the effectiveness and simplicity of the proposed framework.