A Novel Method for Structural Lightweight Design with Topology Optimization

Hongjun Xue, Haiyang Yu, Xiaoyan Zhang and Qi Quan
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Hongjun Xue: School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Haiyang Yu: School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Xiaoyan Zhang: School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Qi Quan: School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-18

Abstract: Topological optimization is an innovative method to realize the lightweight design. This paper proposes a hybrid topology optimization method that combines the SIMP (solid isotropic material with penalization) method and genetic algorithm (GA), called the SIMP-GA method. In the method, SIMP is used to update the chromosomes, which can accelerate convergence. The filtering scheme in the SIMP method can filter unconnected elements to ensure the connectivity of the structure. We studied the influence of varying the filtering radius on the optimized structure. Simultaneously, in the SIMP-GA method, each element is regarded as a gene, which controls the population number to a certain extent, reduces the amount of calculation, and improves the calculation efficiency. The calculation of some typical examples proves that the SIMP-GA method can obtain a better solution than the gradient-based method. Compared with the conventional genetic algorithm and GA-BESO (Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization) method, the calculation efficiency of the proposed method is higher and similar results are obtained. The innovative topology optimization method could be an effective way for structural lightweight design.

Keywords: structural lightweight design; topology optimization; genetic algorithms; SIMP-GA; hybrid method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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