Global optimum design of externally pressurized isogrid stiffened cylindrical shells with added T-rings

PANDA2 is a code for the minimum-weight design of perfect and imperfect elastic stiffened panels and shells made of composite laminates and subjected to multiple sets of in-plane loads, edge moments, normal pressure, and temperature. The scope of PANDA2 is increased to include global optimization and the capability to handle isogrid stiffening. The enhanced program is used to find global optimum designs of internally T-isogrid and internally T-ring stiffened perfect and imperfect isotropic cylindrical shells under uniform external pressure. For the cases studied, it is found that for the perfect optimized shells the isogrid stiffening is important but the rings are not, whereas the opposite holds for the optimized shells with an initial general buckling modal imperfection of amplitude equal to one per cent of the shell radius