• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.5
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• pp.611-622
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• 2021

Composite material-due to low density-causes weight savings, which results in lower fuel consumption of transport vehicles. The aim of the research was to change the existing base-plate of the aluminum airplane container with the composite sandwich plate in order to reduce the weight of the containers of cargo aircrafts. The newly constructed sandwich plate consists of aluminum honeycomb core and composite face-sheets. The face-sheets consist of glass or carbon or hybrid fiber layers. The orientations of the fibers in the face-sheets were 0°, 90° and ±45°. Multi-objective optimization method was elaborated for the newly constructed sandwich plates. Based on the design aim, the importance of the objective functions (weight and cost of sandwich plates) was the same (50%). During the optimization nine design constraints were considered: stiffness, deflection, facing stress, core shear stress, skin stress, plate buckling, shear crimping, skin wrinkling, intracell buckling. The design variables were core thickness and number of layers of the face-sheets. During the optimization both the Weighted Normalized Method of the Excel Solver and the Genetic Algorithm Solver of Matlab software were applied. The mechanical properties of composite face-sheets were calculated by Laminator software according to the Classical Lamination Plate Theory and Tsai-Hill failure criteria. The main added-value of the study is that the multi-objective optimization method was elaborated for the newly constructed sandwich structures. It was confirmed that the optimal new composite sandwich construction-due to weight savings and lower fuel consumption of cargo aircrafts - is more advantageous than conventional all-aluminum container.