Design of plates with curved fibre format

Benefits of directional properties of fibre reinforced composites could be fully utilized by proper placement of the fibres in their optimal spatial orientations. This paper investigates an application of the Rayleigh–Ritz method for design of variable stiffness composite laminates. Local fibre orientation angles are treated as continuous design variables, and their spatial distribution is determined based on an optimality criterion formulation for minimum compliance design. Numerical examples for simply supported rectangular plates are used to demonstrate the improvement in bending stiffness comparing with the results for fixed (constant) fibre orientations in the whole plate domain or for fixed (0°, 45° or 90°) fibre orientations in the unknown in advance sub-domains of the plate.