An improved hybrid topology optimization approach coupling simulated annealing and SIMP (SA-SIMP)

Abstract

The Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) methodology has been used extensively due to its versatility and ease of implementation. However, one of its main drawbacks is that resulting topologies exhibit areas of intermediate densities which lack any physical meaning. This paper presents a hybrid methodology which couples simulated annealing and SIMP (SA-SIMP) in order to achieve solutions which are stiffer and predominantly black and white. Under a look-ahead strategy, the algorithm gradually fixes or removes those elements whose density resulting from SIMP is intermediate. Different strategies for selecting and fixing the fractional elements are examined using benchmark examples, which show that topologies resulting from SA-SIMP are more rigid than SIMP and predominantly black and white.