Determination of Optimal Parameters for Orthotropic Plates with Pentagonal Cutout by Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

One of the designers concerns is structural failure as a result of stress concentration in the geometrical discontinuities. Understanding the effective parameters on stress concentration and proper selection of these parameters enables the designer to achieve a reliable design. In the analysis of perforated orthotropic plate, the effective parameters on stress distribution around cutouts include fiber angle, load angle, curvature radius of the corner of the cutout, rotation angle of the cutout and at last material of the plate. This paper tries to examine effective parameters on stress analysis of infinite orthotropic plate with central pentagonal cutout with imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) introduced the optimum parameters to achieve the least amount of stress around the cutout. Like other evolutionary algorithms, ICA is becoming an important tool for optimization and other complex problem solving. The results reported in this review provide evidence of performance achievement of the ICA in terms of both computing time and quality of solution. In this paper, an analytical method has been used to Lekhnitskii theory for circular and elliptical cutouts. Finite element numerical solution is employed to examine the results of present analytical solution. Overlap of the results of the two methods confirms the validity of the presented solution. Results show that by selecting the aforementioned parameters properly, less amounts of stress could be achieved around the cutout leading to an increase in load-bearing capacity of the structure.