Use of Unconventional Laminates for the Design of a Buckling-Driven Twisting Composite Wing Box

The inherent directionality in the behavior of composite laminates in conjunction with buckling can be used to develop adaptive composite structures. In this direction, this study focuses on optimizing the bending–twisting coupling response of a composite wing box in a simplified representation. Focus is given to the potential benefits of the use of both standard and unconventional laminates to achieve this. The designs are obtained utilizing a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based optimization framework. The results demonstrate that while the optimal solution is one that arises from the use of standard ply angles, i.e., typical quads, solutions relying on a combination of unconventional lay-ups produce similar levels of twisting while remaining more versatile, also leading to an achievable multi-stable design.