Structural topology optimization considering both performance and manufacturability: strength, stiffness, and connectivity

Structural topology optimization considering both performance and manufacturability is very attractive in engineering applications. This work proposes a formulation for structural topology optimization to achieve such a design, in which material strength, structural stiffness, and connectivity are simultaneously considered by integrating stress and simply-connected constraints into the compliance minimization problem. An effective solution algorithm consisting of different optimization techniques is introduced to handle various numerical difficulties resulted from this relatively complex multi-constraint and multi-field problem. Except for the stress penalization and aggregation techniques, the regional measure strategy is used together with the stability transformation method-based correction scheme to address stress constraints, which is also applied to the Poisson equation-based scalar field constraint in the simply-connected constraint. Numerical examples are presented to assess the features of the achieved design along with the performance of the employed algorithm. Comparisons with pure compliance, pure stress, and pure connectivity designs are provided to illustrate differences arising in the proposed design with respect to traditional approaches, also the necessity. Innovative manufacturing-oriented designs with consideration of the strength, stiffness, and connectivity are now available.