The development of design guidelines for integrally stiffened panels under compression using surrogate modelling

Preliminary design of stiffened compression panels used in aerospace structures is commonly based on the routine analytical and semi-empirical equations. Empirical charts are used for obtaining an initial guess to start the preliminary design process. In this paper, preliminary design guidelines for stiffened compression panels are developed based on the non-linear finite element analyses. Meanwhile, the process of design and optimization of the stiffened compression panels are carried out. Modelling phase is based on the finite element simulations of the structure. The surrogate modelling technique is employed to reduce the number of finite element analyses. An efficient technique is developed to find the global optimum of the surrogate model using sequential quadratic programming algorithm. The proposed approach is applied to two types of integrally stiffened panels. The final results are extracted as practical design guidelines which are suitable for preliminary design phase.