Similarity control in topology optimization under static and crash loading scenarios

Abstract

Topology Optimization (TO) redistributes the material within a design space to optimize certain objective functions under given constraints. Currently available TO methods do not consider the designer's preferences about the final material layout in the optimized design. Contrarily, often an improved design similar to a reference design is required because of the economic, manufacturing or assembly restrictions. In this article, the proposed heuristic similarity control methods like the Energy Scaling Method (ESM), weak passive material method, and an intuitive method of modified design domain are compared with the formal mathematical method of Optimality Criteria (OC)-based Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) with a similarity constraint. Initially, the methods are coupled with Hybrid Cellular Automata (HCA) and OC-based SIMP for the TO of a cantilever beam under a static point load. The ESM is found to be the most effective and further tested for similarity-based TO with HCA in crash loading scenarios. The results show that ESM can be used to control the TO process effectively.

Keywords:

• Similarity-Based Topology Optimization (TO)
• Optimality Criteria (OC)-based SIMP
• Hybrid Cellular Automata (HCA)
• Energy Scaling Method (ESM)

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Stefan Menzel (Honda Research Institute Europe, Germany) and Satchit Ramnath (Ohio State University, USA) for their scientific support and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no potential competing interests that relate to the research described in this article.

Notes

1 Regions in the design space with full material density that are not modified by the optimization algorithm.

2 LS-Dyna card.