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Steel and Composite Structures
  Volume 19, Number 4, October 2015 , pages 995-1009
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/scs.2015.19.4.995
 


Design optimization of spot welded structures to attain maximum strength
Ahmet H. Ertas

 
Abstract
    This study presents design optimization of spot welded structures to attain maximum strength by using the Nelder-Mead (Simplex) method. It is the main idea of the algorithm that the simulation run is executed several times to satisfy predefined convergence criteria and every run uses the starting points of the previous configurations. The material and size of the sheet plates are the pre-assigned parameters which do not change in the optimization cycle. Locations of the spot welds, on the other hand, are chosen to be design variables. In order to calculate the objective function, which is the maximum equivalent stress, ANSYS, general purpose finite element analysis software, is used. To obtain global optimum locations of spot welds a methodology is proposed by modifying the Nelder-Mead (Simplex) method. The procedure is applied to a number of representative problems to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that it is possible to obtain the global optimum values without stacking local minimum ones by using proposed methodology.
 
Key Words
    optimal design; spot weld; Finite Element Analysis (FEA); modified Nelder-Mead (Simplex) method; mechanical strength
 
Address
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Karabuk University, Karabuk 78050, Turkey.
 

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