Optimal orientation of orthotropic materials for plates designed against buckling

The paper deals with the optimization of anisotropic plates loaded by in-plane forces and designed against buckling. The internal structure of the plate is seen as a twodimensional locally orthotropic solid and the orientations of the axes of orthotropy are taken as the design variables. The problem of optimization consists in determining the best orientation of the axes of orthotropy from the condition of the maximum behaviour of the critical buckling loads. General properties of the problem, such as multiplicity of the critical parameters and splitting of multiple eigenvalues, are studied. Optimization algorithms are developed to improve the anisotropic properties of the plate. The results of numerically finding the optimal orientation of orthotropic properties are compared with conventional layouts for square and rectangular plates loaded by normal in-plane forces.