Combined topology and fiber path design of composite layers using cellular automata

The popular Solid Isotropic Material Penalization (SIMP) technique of topology design is extended to simultaneous fiber-angle and topology design of composite laminae in a cellular automata (CA) framework. CA is a novel methodology to simulate a physical phenomenon based on iterative local updates of field and design variables. Displacements are updated satisfying local equilibrium of CA cells. Fiber angles and density measures are updated based on the optimality criteria for the minimum compliance design. Numerical results for the design of 2D cantilever plates for single and multiple load cases are used to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm.