Design Methodology of Damage Tolerant Stiffened Composite Panels with Minimum Cost

In this paper a novel design strategy for composite structures is presented. The multiobjective methodology reaches the optimal topological configurations with minimum weight and the maximum global buckling load of both damage tolerant and damage resistant, stiffened composite panels. Once performed the optimization stage, the resulting Pareto optimal solution are subsequently analyzed by a specific off-line ranking procedure, specifically developed for cost evaluation of the in-service life .