Thickness optimization of fiber reinforced laminated composites using the discrete material optimization method

This work concerns a novel large-scale multi-material topology optimization method for simultaneous determination of the optimum variable integer thickness and fiber orientation throughout laminate structures with fixed outer geometries while adhering to certain manufacturing constraints. The conceptual combinatorial/integer problem is relaxed to a continuous problem and solved on basis of the so-called Discrete Material Optimization method, explicitly including the manufacturing constraints as linear constraints