Open Access

ARTICLE

T-Splines Based Isogeometric Topology Optimization with Arbitrarily Shaped Design Domains

Gang Zhao^1,2, Jiaming Yang¹, Wei Wang^1,*, Yang Zhang¹, Xiaoxiao Du¹, Mayi Guo¹

1 School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China
2 Beijing Engineering Technological Research Center of High-Efficient & Green CNC Machining Process, Beijing, 100191, China

* Corresponding Author: Wei Wang. Email:

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Recent Developments of Isogeometric Analysis and its Applications in Structural Optimization)

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2020, 123(3), 1033-1059. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2020.09920

Received 29 January 2020; Accepted 19 March 2020; Issue published 28 May 2020

Abstract

In this paper, a new isogeometric topology optimization (ITO) method is proposed by using T-splines based isogeometric analysis (IGA). The arbitrarily shaped design domains, directly obtained from CAD, are represented by a single T-spline surface which overcomes the topological limitations of Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS). The coefficients correlated with control points are directly used as design variables. Therefore, the T-spline basis functions applied for geometry description and calculation of structural response are simultaneously introduced to represent the density distribution. Several numerical examples show that the proposed approach leads to a coherent workflow to handle design problems of complicated structures. The optimized results are free of checkerboard patterns without additional stabilization and filtering techniques due to the properties of T-splines, which also simplified the post-processing. In addition, through performing local refinement, we can easily achieve multiresolution optimization and infill optimization within the T-splines based framework. In general, the proposed method provides a possibility to design, analyze, and optimize engineering structures in a uniform model, which has the potential to improve design effi- ciency and reduce the cost of product development.

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Citations