Abstract
Much of the literature on minimum-weight design is concerned with structures with continuously varying dimensions. Structures of this kind achieve an absolute minimum of weight and thereby provide a useful standard of comparison, but their manufacturing cost is prohibitive in most applications. As a step toward the establishment of optimality conditions for more practical structures, the present paper discusses optimal design of sandwich beams and frames with segmentwise constant cross sections. Optimality is shown to require that the mean square stress in the face sheets has the same value for all segments. The use of the optimality condition is illustrated by examples.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Prager, W., andTaylor, J. E.,Problems of Optimal Structural Design, Journal of Applied Mechanics (to appear).
Prager, W., andShield, R. T.,Optimal Design of Multipurpose Structures. International Journal of Solids and Structures (to appear).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Communicated by H. Halkin
This research was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Project DEFENDER, and was monitored by the US Army Research Office-Durham, Contract No. DA-31-124-ARO-D-257.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sheu, C.Y., Prager, W. Minimum-weight design with piecewise constant specific stiffness. J Optim Theory Appl 2, 179–186 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00926999
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00926999