... density coefficients are treated as design variables, and a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm is employed to enhance numerical robustness and effectively avoid ill-conditioning and singularity issues. Findings Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed method can reliably generate...

..., membrane and shear strain energies during the optimization process are also monitored. KEYWORDS Finite elements Axisymmetric shell structures Mindlin-Reissner shell theory Shape optimization Automatic mesh generation Sensitivity analysis Sequential quadratic programming INTRODUCTION Axisymmetric shell...