Multi-Objective Green Design Optimization of Carbon Nanotube Composite Structures

C. MORILLO; D. S. LEE; G. BUGEDA; S. OLLER; E. OÑATE

Conferencia; V International Conference on Computational Methods for Coupled Problems in Science and Engineering - Coupled Problems.; 2013

 The remarkable mechanical properties exhibited by Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) have stimulated much interest in their use to reinforce advanced composites. So far, hundreds of publications have reported certain aspects of the mechanical enhancement of different polymer system by CNTs. Many of these studies have been discussed in an excellent review [1]. The variation of parameters, such as CNT type, growth method, chemical pre-treatment as well as polymer type and processing strategy has given some encouraging results in fabricating relatively strong CNT-polymer composites.Sustainability, ?cradle-to-grave? design, industrial ecology, eco-efficiency, and ?green? chemistry are not just newly coined buzzwords, but form the principles that are guiding the development of a new generation of ?green? materials [2]. CNT composite materials are no exception to this new paradigm.The goal of this work is to apply a multi-disciplinary design optimization methodology in order to study the mechanical performance in terms of weight and stiffness of Carbon Nanotube Composite Structures (CNTCSs), considering additionally the sustainable design quantified through the Adherence to Green Design Principles (AGDP) of the polymer structure.For the optimization process a distributed/parallel Genetic Algorithm (GA) in Robust Multi-objective Optimization Platform (RMOP) developed at CIMNE is used; this platform is coupled with a FEA based composite structure analysis tool named Compack to find the optimal combination of stacking sequences for CNTCSs. Figure 1 shows the overall algorithm for design optimization problems using RMOGA. In this study the estimation of AGDP to polymer materials proposed by Tabone et al. [3] is used.This work addresses the multi-criteria design optimization of reinforced CNTCS, seeking to improve mechanical properties such as weight and stiffness, and the sustainable design including the AGDP. There is a variety of studies about the use of CNT as reinforcement in composites. However, this work only considers those composites that improve their mechanical properties with the addition of CNT