Abstract
Successful performance of beam structures is critical to failure prevention, and beam performance can be optimized by careful consideration of beam shape and thickness. Shape and thickness optimization of beam structures having linear behaviour is treated. The first problem considered is the thickness distribution of the beam where the optimization variable is the thickness of the control points. The second problem is the shape optimization where the optimization variables are the ordinates of the control points. The optimization criterion (function objective to be minimized) is defined starting with the Von Mises criterion expressed in plane constraints. The resolution of the mechanical problem is made by the finite element method, and the optimization algorithm is the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method.