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Among the modern structural materials, the history of fibre-reinforced composites is only a few decades old. However, in this short period of time, there has been a tremendous advancement in the science and technology of this new class of materials. The low density, high strength, high stiffness-to-weight ratio, excellent durability, and design extendibility of fibre-reinforced polymers are the primary reasons for their use in many structural components in the aircraft, automotive, marine, building, and other industries. Currently safe design practice in structural engineering is based on the application of numerical methods in strength and stability analyses which by any means is time consuming process. In a design process using response surface methodology for any type of system, the selected combinations of input variables are implemented into analyses and approximated their behaviour and effect on the response of a system by developing reliable metamodels. It has been shown that these metamodels can further be effectively implemented in the derivation of the optimal design guideless for thin-walled stiffened structures.
About the author
Dr.sc.ing. Kaspars Kalni¿¿ was born on January 8, 1980, in Riga, the capital of Latvia. He graduated in structural engineering defending his doctoral thesis in 2006. Currently he is a project manager on European Commission 7th Framework Programme research projects on composite materials and structures at Riga Technical University.
