A solution to the stacking sequence of a composite laminate plate with constant thickness using simulated annealing algorithms

Due to its high reliability, composite material is commonly used in industry. Moreover, the stacking sequence is very crucial to the strength of the composite material. However, the arrangement of this sequence is very time-consuming. Actually, since stacking sequences are usually NP complete, simulated annealing (SA) algorithms were borrowed to deal with the stacking sequence problems in this study. The edging stress of a composite plate with constant thickness, which was obtained using an analytical method, was used as the objective function in the SA algorithms. Three examples of constant thickness and symmetrical composite laminate plates were used to examine the performance of the proposed algorithms. The results of computational tests presented are very promising.