The goal of this paper is to formulate and solve structural optimization problems with constraints on the global stability of the structure. The stability constraint is based on the linear buckling phenomenon. We formulate the problem as a nonconvex semidefinite programming problem and introduce an algorithm based on the Augmented Lagrangian method combined with the Trust-Region technique. The algorithm is implemented in a code PENNON. The paper is concluded by a series of numerical examples.
Citation
Research Report 300, Institute of Applied Mathematics, University of Erlangen, February 2004