Prebuckling enhancement of beams and plates under uncertain loadings and arbitrary initial imperfections

Crooked beams and plates with arbitrary initial geometric imperfections are optimized in order to improve their prebuckling response in the presence of uncertain loadings. A novel optimization approach is presented to simultaneously handle the two types of uncertainties: arbitrary initial imperfection patterns and arbitrary loadings. A remarkable improvement in the prebuckling response of optimal designs is achieved by reducing the level of prebuckling displacements measured in some appropriate norm, irrespective of the uncertain imperfection pattern or loading. Two different norms are propose...