Buckling load optimization of laminated plates via artificial bee colony algorithm

In this present work, Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (ABCA) is used to optimize the stacking sequences of simply supported antisymmetric laminated composite plates with criticial buckling load as the objective functions. The fibre orientations of the layers are selected as the optimization design variables with the aim to find the optimal laminated plates. In order to perform the optimization based on the ABCA, a special code is written in MATLAB software environment. Several numerical examples are presented to illustrate this optimization algorithm for different plate aspect ratios, number of layers and load ratios.