Methods for increased efficiency of fem-based topology optimization

Abstract

Lightweight construction is playing an increasingly important role for a wide variety of reasons, such as improving energy efficiency. In addition to lightweight material construction, lightweight structure construction is gaining more and more influence, which is made possible due to topology optimization. The aim of topology optimization is to develop an optimal design proposal based on a construction space model and given boundary conditions (e.g. mechanical or thermal). The calculation of the structural response is often done using the time consuming finite element method (FEM). Since topology optimization is an iterative process, usually many finite element analyses (FEA) have to be performed, which results in high computing time. Therefore, this article presents different methods to minimize computing time by exploiting various special features that occur with FEA in the context of optimizations.