Incremental method of Young modulus updating procedure in topology optimization

Abstract

This paper presents a new Young modulus updating procedure as an extension to the SIMP method used for topology optimization. In essence, the modified Young modulus updating procedure consists in taking into account in a given optimization step not only the material density from the preceding step, but also the increment in density in the two preceding steps. Thanks to this, it is possible to obtain a solution in cases in which the classic SIMP method failed. The variational approach was adopted and the structure's strain energy was minimized under constraints imposed on body mass. FEM was used to solve numerical examples. The numerical analysis confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method, particularly for structures with relatively long spans.