Evolutionary topology optimization using design space adjustment based on fixed grid

Abstract

Design space optimization for topology based on fixed grid is proposed and its superiority to conventional topology optimization is shown. In the conventional topology optimization, the design domain is fixed. It is, however, desirable to make the design domain evolve into a better one during optimization process by increasing or decreasing the number of design pixels or variables, which we call design space optimization. A breakthrough in obtaining sensitivities when design space expands has been made recently with necessary mathematical background, but due to coupling effect and others, sensitivity results have not been satisfactory. Three innovative implementations are developed in this paper. Firstly, the proper characteristics of artificial material are defined. The second one is to decouple neighbouring elements for exact design space sensitivities. The previous design space optimization has been tedious because only one layer can be added. So, the third innovation is a new expansion strategy with multi-layers based on design space sensitivities. As a result, the proposed evolutionary method can get an optimum much faster than ever before especially for large-scale problems. It is also conjectured that this gives higher probability of getting the global optimum, as confirmed by numerical examples. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.