Critical investigation of the combined compliance average and spreading measures in the robust topology optimization with uncertain loading magnitude and direction

Abstract

The paper critically investigates the role of the combined compliance average and spreading measures in the volume-constrained continuous robust topology optimization with uncertain loading magnitude and direction. In the robust topology optimization the generally expected and most popular robustness measure is the expected compliance, In the expectancy oriented approach, the compliance increment which is needed to get the robust design is an implicitly defined response variable. In order to open the possibility of the creative contribution of the designer to the best robust design searching process, this measure is sometimes combined with a spreading-oriented measure, which may be the variance or standard deviation. The best weighting schema can be done by a try-and-error-like algorithm in which the weights are design variables and the compliance-increment remains an implicitly defined response variable. In this paper, it will be shown that all of the compliance oriented approaches which are based on a single or combined statistical measure can be replaced by a new compliance-function-shape-oriented robust approach in which the allowedcompliance- increment will be an explicitly defined design variable and for a given increment value the robust solution will be the theoretically best one. A popular volume-constrained symmetric bridge problem with uncertain loading magnitude and direction will be presented to demonstrate the viability and efficiency of the proposed robust approach.