Manufacturable mechanical part design with constrained topology optimization

Abstract

In recent years, topology optimization has been actively researched in computer-aided mechanical part design. However, practical applications of topology optimization to mechanical part design are still very limited in today’s industries. One of the major reasons is that current topology optimization methods always have the tendency to generate hollow and framework-like structures. These structures are very difficult to interpret and most often not directly manufacturable or not manufacturable at all. In this study, a multi-directional constrained method is developed for topology optimization so that topologies of optimized structures similar to mechanical design could be generated. The main objective of this method is to ensure that mechanical parts generated from topology optimization will be simple and manufacturable. Since there is a large diversity of manufacturing technologies, the proposed method allows the customization of constraint directions so that different manufacturing technologies may be catered for. In the proposed method, a modified solid isotropic material with penalization scheme is used for the topology optimization. To demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method, a number of sample studies have been presented. Even though the proposed method is currently implemented only for two-dimensional case studies, it will be extended to three-dimensional applications in the future.