Development of a tool for optimizing structures

• Grant number: 99/06295-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Start date: March 01, 2000
• End date: December 31, 2002
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Thermal Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Susana Angélica Falco Meira
• Grantee: Susana Angélica Falco Meira
• Company: Fibraforte Engenharia Indústria e Comércio Ltda
• City: São José dos Campos

Abstract

The purpose of this program is to develop information technology procedures and tools that are more efficient and have broader coverage to optimize structures, using MSC/Nastran to model and analyze structures and the Faipa and DOT software programs for optimization. In practical optimization applications for the structure of satellites, carried out at Inpe, it was observed that the optimization algorithms available in the MSC/Nastran structure analysis software were not very efficient from the standpoint of convergence and arriving at the global optimum. There are general purpose software programs available that offer more powerful and efficient optimization algorithms. One of them is DOT - Design Optimization Tools, sold commercially by Vanderplaats Research and Development. Another software program available is Faipa - Feasible Arc Interior Point Algorithm, developed under Coppe’s Mechanical Engineering Program. In the first stage of this program we sought to show that optimization in structural projects carried out with more solid optimization algorithms, such as DOT and Faipa, together with MSC/Nastran for modeling and analyzing structures by finite elements, are more efficient and lead to better results than the problems solved with the algorithms available in the MSC/Nastran optimization modules. (AU)