Optimisation of Recycled Thermoplastic Plate (Tile)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to perform a structural optimisation of a flat thermoplastic plate (tile). This task is developed computationally through the interface between an optimisation algorithm and the finite element method with the goal of minimising the equivalent stress with a specified target stress of 2 MPa when applied with a load intensity of 1000N. A 300 x 300 x 20 mm thermoplastic plate was selected for the optimisation, which was performed with a tool in MATLAB R2012b known as genetic algorithm accompanied with a static analysis in ANSYS 15. The results produced the optimum equivalent stress (δopt) of 2.136 MPa with the optimum dimensions of 305 x 302 x 20 mm. Also, the dimensions of the plate with the optimum value of the equivalent stress were discovered to be within the lower and upper bound dimensions of the plate. The thermoplastic plate object of the optimization was a square plate of 300 x 300mm and 20 mm thick with isotropic properties and a particular load and boundary conditions were applied on the entire plate.