Topology optimization driven by anisotropic mesh adaptation: towards a free-form design

Keywords

Advanced Numerical Methods for Scientific Computing
SC4I/Digitization, Innovation, and Competitiveness of the Production System
Code:
02/2019
Title:
Topology optimization driven by anisotropic mesh adaptation: towards a free-form design
Date:
Saturday 19th January 2019
Author(s):
Micheletti, S.; Perotto, S.; Soli, L.
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Abstract:
We propose the new adaptive algorithm SIMPATY for topology opti- mization to design lightweight and stiff structures exhibiting free-form fea- tures. This is achieved by properly combining the classical SIMP method with an anisotropic mesh adaptation strategy based on a recovery-based a posteriori error estimator. Mesh adaptivity allows us to contain (and, for simple structures, even to eliminate) the filtering usually adopted in a topol- ogy optmization context. Thus, the final layout is intrinsically smooth, so that the post-processing phase can be strongly reduced (or even skipped), and the structure can directly move on to the production manufacturing phase. A free-form design is also enhanced by anisotropic mesh adaptivity. An extensive numerical validation supports these remarkable properties.
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Computers and Structures