摘要：AbstractThis paper describes a design optimization study of the composite egg-shaped submersible pressure hull employing optimization and finite element analysis (FEA) tools as a first attempt to provide an optimized design of the composite egg-shaped pressure hull for manufacturing or further investigations. A total of 15 optimal designs for the composite egg-shaped pressure hull under hydrostatic pressure are obtained in terms of fibers’ angles and the number of layers for 5 lay-up arrangements and 3 unidirectional (UD) composite materials. The optimization process is performed utilizing a genetic algorithm and FEA in ANSYS. The minimization of the buoyancy factor(B.F)is selected as the objective for the optimization under constraints on both material failure and buckling strength. Nonlinear buckling analysis is conducted for one optimal design considering both geometric nonlinearity and imperfections. A sensitivity study is also conducted to further investigate the influence of the design variables on the optimal design of the egg-shaped pressure hull.Highlights•Design optimization of egg-shaped composite pressure hull for minimum buoyancy factor is conducted.•The number of layers and orientation angles are optimized for five lay-up configurations using three composite materials.•Nonlinear buckling analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of imperfection on the critical depth.•A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to investigate the effect of design variables on the optimized design.•A maximum improvement of 54.2% in buoyancy factor over similar steel hull is obtained for Epoxy/Carbon.
