Integrated design methodology of lightweight materials and structures

It is recognized that the structural behaviors of cellular solids are directly related to the effective properties of material that depend greatly upon the involved microstructure. In this paper, an integrated design methodology is proposed for the global stiffness maximization of the overall structure and the local design of material microstructure based on the homogenization method of multi-scale computing. By means of the dual optimization scheme and perimeter constraint, the material microstructures are efficiently optimized with elimination of checkerboards. Numerical results show that the proposed method is well adapted to the design of lightweight structures such as honeycomb panels and sandwich panels. This provides an innovative design concept for the requirements of aerospace lightweight structures satisfying extreme working conditions.