On the Design of Some Particular Orthotropic Plates with Non-Standard Ply Orientations

This paper deals with the design of thin orthotropic plates exhibiting required stiffness properties. An optimization programme based on the well-known gradient method is used to obtain stacking sequences in which lamination parameters are very close to a set of target lamination parameters. Some examples are studied. The stacking sequences found are not symmetric while the coupling matrix is zero and the ply angles are not standard.