Open Access

ARTICLE

Structural Topology Optimization Based on the Level Set Method Using COMSOL

Shaohua Zhang^1,2, Pei Li¹, Yongteng Zhong¹, Jiawei Xiang^1,3

1 College of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, 325035, P.R. China.
2 School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, 541004, P.R. China.
3 Corresponding author, Professor. E-mail: jwxiang@wzu.edu.cn

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2014, 101(1), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2014.101.017

Abstract

In order to obtain smooth boundary and improve computational efficiency, a new topology optimization scheme based on the level set method is presented. Using the level set function as design variable and the volume ratio of the solid material as volume constraint, respectively, this scheme can easily implement compliance minimization structure topology optimization in associated with the reaction-diffusion equation in commercial software COMSOL. Compared with the results of solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) and traditional level set method, this scheme obtained a smooth geometry boundary. In the present computational scheme, the computational cost could be enormously saved without solving the complicated Hamilton-Jacobi equation restricted by Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition. Two numerical examples verified the performance of the proposed structural topology optimization scheme.

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Keywords

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