Author(s)

H. Sakurai

Abstract

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) possess properties that vary gradually and are highly heat resistant. When incorporating these FGMs into a structure, the required distribution of material properties must be determined and produced to specification. Thus far, an inverse analysis method has been used for estimating a distribution of a Young’s modulus of FGMs. However, minimizing an objective function to estimate a material property using the Davidon-Fletcher- Powell method did not converge under some initial conditions. Therefore, convergence of a solution depends on initial conditions. On the other hand, the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm has drawn considerable interest in global optimization of a multimodal function. The objective of the present paper is to propose a method of numerical experimentation to conduct inverse analysis in FGMs with the ABC algorithm. A numerical experiment estimating both size and a graded index of an FGM beam that is based on measured stress values is presented. Next, determining a distribution of thermal conductivity in twodimensional FGMs using measured steady state temperatures is carried out. The results of the numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Keywords: numerical experiment, inverse analysis, functionally graded material, graded index, thermal conductivity, Artificial Bee Colony algorithm.

Keywords

numerical experiment, inverse analysis, functionally gradedmaterial, graded index, thermal conductivity, Artificial Bee Colony algorithm.