OPTIMAL THICKNESS OF A CYLINDRICAL SHELL

In this paper an optimization problem for a cylindrical shell is discussed. The aim is to look for an optimal thickness of a shell to minimize the deformation under an applied external force. As a side condition, the volume of the shell has to stay constant during the optimization process. The deflection is calculated using an approach from shell theory. The resulting control-to-state operator is investigated analytically and a corresponding optimal control problem is formulated. Moreover, necessary conditions for an optimal solution are stated and numerical solutions are presented for different examples