Composite Optimization

Altair Forum User said:

Hello everyone, I'm trying to optimize a composite component (which is freezed together with some aluminum components) that has already been modeled and analyzed in Hypermesh using a plybook with 86 plies.

Some Information to my setup:
Plies:    0° : unidirectional carbon fiber 0.1mm     -----       45°, 90°: carbon fiber fabric 0.2mm
I have created two material cards and defined a property card as PCOMPP and entered the data of those that they have been laminated together (Z0 Option: Z0=0, Laminate option: total).  After some research, I found out that I should change the laminate setting to smear before optimizing it and I changed it.

Goals:
I want to keep the mass as low as possible and at the same time reduce the displacement at a desired point so that the component no longer fails (TSAI WU failure criteria) in a load case. I tried a few things but I was not happy with the results of the FreeSize optimization and I received many error messages during these attempts.

My questions & doubts:
1. I am using the same laminate which I created for the linear static analysis: Should I create a simple layer structure and do the optimizations for it?
2. I have not assigned any material for the composite component because the two materials are defined in the laminate anyway. Am I right?
3. I would like to keep the thickness of the layers the same (0 ° = 0.1mm, 45 ° / 90 ° = 0.2mm) because I only have these materials available. : I've defined 3 Plyman parameters for this... Does anyone have a different opinion?
4. Response: res_mass, res_displacement --> cont_displacement: upper bound has been defined --> objective: min - mass
5. Mindim: Min Member Size > 4 x mesh size but I still get very strange shapes
6. My next steps are size and shuffling optimizations. I also tried to finish the size optimization and before that I updated the TMANUK of all plies and the upper / lower bounds of the design variables... the thicknesses of plies are changing to the desired values but I can not improve the mass or the displacement or the shapes of plies.
7. What would you have done differently than I did? or can anyone identify my mistakes?

I would be very happy for your help or tips.

Best regards

1. Same as analysis

2. Only need material in the ply

3. Plyman, correct.