Weight minimization of elastic plates using Reissner-Mindlin model and mixed-interpolated elements

summary:The problem to find an optimal thickness of the plate in a set of bounded Lipschitz continuous functions is considered. Mean values of the intensity of shear stresses must not exceed a given value. Using a penalty method and finite element spaces with interpolation to overcome the “locking” effect, an approximate optimization problem is proposed. We prove its solvability and present some convergence analysis