Design of a Laminated Plate Possessing the Required Stiffnesses Using the Minimum Number of Materials and Layers

This paper deals with the problem of the design of a laminated plate possessing the required set of stiffnesses under the condition of using the minimum number of layers and minimum number of materials. It is shown that the minimum number of layers is not more than four and the minimum number of materials is not more than two. We consider the case when three types of stiffness (bending, in-plane and out-of-plane) are prescribed and the case when two types of stiffness (physical bending and in-plane) are prescribed. It is proved that for both cases the sets of the possible values of physical stiffnesses are the same but the sets of designs can be different. A design algorithm is developed.