Optimizacion Estructural

Methodology for Topology and Shape
Optimization in the Design Process

Masters Thesis in the Masters programme Solid and Fluid Mechanics
ANTON OLASON
DANIEL TIDMAN
Department of Applied Mechanics
Division of Dynamics
CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Gteborg, Sweden 2010
Masters Thesis 2010:11
MASTERS THESIS 2010:11
Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design

Process
Masters Thesis in Solid and Fluid Mechanics
ANTON OLASON
DANIEL TIDMAN

CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Goteborg, Sweden 2010
Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design Process

ANTON OLASON
DANIEL TIDMAN
c
ANTON
OLASON, DANIEL TIDMAN, 2010
Masters Thesis 2010:11

ISSN 1652-8557
Chalmers University of Technology
SE-412 96 Goteborg
Sweden
Telephone: + 46 (0)31-772 1000
Cover:
The cover image depicts the three different types of structural optimization; size, shape
and topology optimization
Chalmers Reproservice
Goteborg, Sweden 2010
Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design Process

Masters Thesis in Solid and Fluid Mechanics
ANTON OLASON
DANIEL TIDMAN
Chalmers University of Technology
Abstract
In the last decade the use of commercial structural optimization software have
increased rapidly. An especially interesting field is topology optimization where optimization methods are used to generate a design concept early in the design process.
However, the possibilities and limitations of topology and shape optimization in the
design process at Saab Microwave Systems have not been investigated previously.
The objective of this masters thesis is to investigate how and when structural
optimization should be applied in the design process. The used tools are HyperMesh,
Optistruct and HyperView which are parts of the software suite HyperWorks from
Altair Engineering. Experience and knowledge in using structural optimization have
been obtained by an initial literature study combined with evaluation of multiple
trial cases of different nature. The trial cases have been performed as limited design projects where structures were improved or designed by using different types
of optimization. The most common task has been to reduce mass with maintained
mechanical properties as a constraint. This has been used to develop a sensible
methodology together with guidelines for practical matters such as parameter values
and recommended options.
It has been found that there are essentially in two stages of the design process
that structural optimization can be applied. In the early stage of concept generation, topology optimization should be used to develop an efficient structure from
the beginning. At this level an automatized variation of optimization parameters
was proven useful to find the best feasible design possible. In the later stage, shape
and size optimization should be used to fine-tune the structure realized from the
topology optimization. Using optimization in this manner gives great possibilities to
save time and mass as well as it may produce innovative designs no one would ever
think about. Altogether, this makes structural optimization an outstanding tool in
the design process.
The HyperWorks package was found to be a capable tool for performing the used
types of structural optimization giving usable results. In most of the trial cases
the problem could be modeled as desired in means of geometry, discretization and
optimization setup.
Applying topology optimization in the concept stage requires a close cooperation
between the designer and the analysis engineer to create the design domain. Further,
a proper formulation of loads and boundary conditions is crucial for a usable solution.
Interpreting the results from the topology optimization is a difficult task and requires
experience and knowledge of other aspects such as manufacturability. Such matters
have not been investigated in any greater detail.
Keywords: topology optimization, shape optimization, SIMP, Optistruct, methodology
, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11
II
Contents
Abstract
Contents
III
Preface
1 Introduction
1.1 Background . . . . .
1.2 Purpose . . . . . . .
1.3 Objective . . . . . .
1.4 Scope and limitations
1.5 Method . . . . . . .
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2 Theory
2.1 Mathematical optimization . . . . . .
2.1.1 Multicriteria optimization . .
2.2 Structural optimization . . . . . . . .
2.3 Sizing optimization . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 Shape optimization . . . . . . . . . .
2.4.1 Perturbation vector approach
2.5 Topology optimization . . . . . . . .
2.5.1 Density method . . . . . . . .
2.5.2 Homogenization method . . .
2.5.3 Checkerboarding . . . . . . .
3 Overview of Used Tools
3.1 Optistruct . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.1 Features . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.1 FE modeling . . . . . .
3.2.2 Optimization objective
3.2.3 Topology optimization .
3.2.4 Shape optimization . . .
3.2.5 Size optimization . . . .
4 Trial Cases
4.1 Trial case: Fixture . . . . . .
4.1.1 Design domain . . . .
4.1.2 Topology optimization
4.1.3 Realization of concept
4.1.4 Conclusions . . . . . .
4.2 Trial case: Clip . . . . . . . .
4.2.1 Problem formulation .
4.2.2 Topology optimization
4.2.3 Realization of concept
4.2.4 Shape optimization . .
4.2.5 Conclusions . . . . . .
4.3 Trial case: TRU . . . . . . . .
4.3.1 FE-modeling . . . . .
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5 Parameter Study
5.1 Volume fraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2 Minimum member size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3 Penalization of intermediate densities DISCRETE
5.4 Stress constraint in topology optimization . . . .
5.5 Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.5.1 Designing load cases . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.5.2 Robustness against failure . . . . . . . . .
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6 Development of Methodology
6.1 Concept generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.1.1 Realization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 Detailed optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7 Synthesis
7.1 Lessons learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 Evaluation of software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Recommendations for further work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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A Script
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B Methodology
52
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
IV
4.3.2
4.3.3
4.3.4
Trial
4.4.1
4.4.2
4.4.3
4.4.4
4.4.5
4.4.6
4.4.7
Trial
Trial
4.6.1
4.6.2
4.6.3
4.6.4
4.6.5
4.6.6
4.6.7
Trial
4.7.1
4.7.2
4.7.3
4.7.4
Aim and loading conditions . . . . .

Topology optimization . . . . . . . .
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
case: Strut for airborne radar . . . . .
Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Load cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aim and Limitations . . . . . . . . .
Conceptual design . . . . . . . . . .
Detailed design . . . . . . . . . . . .
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
case: Plate for thermal conduction . .
case: Mounting base for rotating radar
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Design domain . . . . . . . . . . . .
Loadcases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Concept generation . . . . . . . . . .
Detailed optimization . . . . . . . . .
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
case: Strut fitting . . . . . . . . . . . .
Problem formulation . . . . . . . . .
Topology optimization . . . . . . . .
New design domain . . . . . . . . . .
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Preface
This masters thesis is the final part of the masters programme Solid and Fluid Mechanics.
It is also our last efforts as students at Chalmers University of Technology. The work
was carried out from January to June 2010 at the office of Saab Microwave Systems in
Lackareback.
We would like to thank everyone who has helped and contributed to this Masters thesis
work. In particular we would like to thank our supervisor at Saab Microwave Systems,
Ruoshan Luo, for invaluable help and guidance during the work. The feedback and knowhow has helped us to continue our work in the right direction. Also we would like to
thank our supervisor and examiner H
akan Johanssonat at Applied Mechanics, Chalmers,
for guidance and expertise within the field of solid mechanics and structural optimization.
His devotion to our work has inspired us to produce more interesting and usable results.
We are also very thankful to Jan Lindahl, analysis engineer at Saab Microwave Systems,
for reflections and tips contributing to the technical height. Further we would like to thank
all the employees at Saabs department in Lackareback for their hospitality and cakes at
the Friday coffee brakes.
In addition we want to address thanks to Altair Engineering who has generously provided software licenses and given very helpful and appreciated courses in how to use the
software (HyperMesh, Optistruct and HyperView). Altair Engineering has also assisted
with technical support in the best possible way.
This report is published in two slightly different versions, one public and one internal
for Saab.
Goteborg June 2010

Anton Olason, Daniel Tidman
VI
Introduction
This is a masters thesis project initiated by Saab Microwave System to investigate the
possibility of using topology and shape optimization in the design process. In this chapter
the background, purpose, objective and limitations are described together with the used
method.
1.1
Background
At Saab Microwave Systems (SMW) a variety of different mechanical structures are developed. It is always desired to find the best possible design under some given circumstances.
The current design method is often an iterative process where a design is proposed by
the designer and then analyzed using the finite element method (FEM) by a structural
engineer. The analysis will often also be complemented by mechanical tests on a prototype. Possible modifications to the design to satisfy unfulfilled requirements or to improve
the design are then made by the designer. The new design is analyzed and the process is
repeated. This iterative process may take a lot of time and result in a suboptimal design
as multiple changes are added to each other with no overall view.
In the last decade the use of commercial optimization software for topology and shape
optimization in the industry has increased rapidly and has shown to be applicable to many
different types of problems. The idea is that the designer and the structural engineer both
are involved in the initial stage when the first design proposal is conceived. Topology
optimization is used to generate a good design concept. However, the possibilities and
limitations of such a method in the design process at SMW have not yet been investigated.
A similar work has been performed by Fagerstrom and Jansson at Volvo Car Corporation [1]. The software that will be used are the preprocessor HyperMesh, the optimization
tool Optistruct and the postprocessor HyperView, all of them products of Altair Engineering.
1.2
Purpose
The purpose of this work is to gain an understanding of what topology and shape optimization is, the theory behind and how it can be used to improve the design process at
SMW.
1.3
Objective
The main task is to investigate how and when structural optimization can be used at SMW
in the design process. This includes an evaluation of possibilities and limitations and to
find areas where this technology is applicable. The end result is a sensible methodology of
when and how to perform an optimization using a commercial software suite. Guidelines
for different aspects of the process like values of various parameters and options will also
be determined. All the required steps will be presented in a flowchart.
1.4
Scope and limitations
The focus of this work is to develop a practical and robust method when using topology
optimization in the design process and this is where most of the effort will be put. The
theory and mathematics behind the different optimization methods will not be investigated
in any greater detail. Boundary conditions, loads and material parameters are considered
to be known, the derivation of them are beyond the scope of this work.
1.5
Method
The work for the master thesis was carried out at SAAB Microwave Systems at the office
in Lackareback where computers and software needed were provided. The semester started
out with planning resulting in a planning report briefly describing the different steps to be
performed and their respective required time.
The work was divided in three different phases: Study of literature and software, study
of trial cases and development of methodology. The literature study was conducted to get
a general understanding of optimization and topology optimization. This included reading
a number of scientific articles as well as books on the subject. The understanding of the
theory was later used to produce good results more efficiently and to analyze them. In
addition, time was invested in learning about practical matters such as how the different
software are used and how they work together (HyperMesh, Optistruct and HyperView).
How the theory comes into practice in the software was also studied.
In the second phase the focus was shifted to get experience and knowledge of working
with topology and shape optimization by performing several trial cases of different nature.
The trial cases were carried out as short design projects, starting from specifications and
demands of a structure resulting in a final design concept. The used approaches, results
and learning were evaluated for each case. This more practical phase included study of
robustness of solutions when varying loads and constraints and evaluation of different
parameters and their influence on the solution. A lot of effort was spent on how to perform
the different stages of the optimization to get as good results as possible.
Finally, a reasonable and effective methodology of how to effectively use optimization
in the design process was produced. The methodology was based on gained understanding
and experience of optimization as well as thoughts of designers and analysis engineers at
SMW. The methodology was presented as a step-by-step guide book to make it as useful
as possible at SMW after the finish of the thesis work.
Theory
Here the basics of optimization in general and topology optimization in particular will
be described; for a more in-depth look on mathematical optimization please refer to Rao
[2] and Ehrgott [3] and for structural optimization see Bendse [4] and Klarbring and
Christensen [5].
2.1
Mathematical optimization
The basic principle of optimization is to find the best possible solution under given circumstances [2]. One example of optimization is finding the quickest route when using
the public transportation system or, as in the case of structural optimization, finding the
optimal distribution of material that satisfies some given requirements. This is most often
done by decisions made by the passenger or the engineer from their own experience and
knowledge about the subject.
The objective of the optimization problem is often some sort of maximization or minimization, for example minimization of required time or maximization of stiffness. To be
able to find the optimum solution the goodness of a solution depending on a particular
set of design variables needs to be expressed with a numerical value. This is typically done
with a function of the design variables known as the cost function.
Mathematically the general optimization problem is most often formulated as minimization of the cost function (which can easily be transformed to maximization by minimizing
the negative function) subject to constraints, this can be expressed as [2]:

x1
x2
Find x =
.. which minimizes f (x)
(2.1)
x
n

gi (x) 0, i = 1, 2, . . . , m
subject to
hj (x) = 0, j = 1, 2, . . . , n
where x is the vector of design parameters and f (x) is the cost function. The functions
gi (x) and hj (x) are called the inequality constraint function and the equality constraint
function respectively and they define the constraints of the problem. This is called a
constrained optimization problem.
2.1.1
Multicriteria optimization
In many cases there are multiple objectives that need to be taken into account. One
example used by Ehrgott [3] is when buying a car; it is for example desired to have a car
that is powerful, cheap and fuel efficient. Obviously it is not possible to find a car that is
the best in every aspect, a powerful car is normally neither cheap nor fuel efficient.
A concept often used in optimization with multiple objectives is Pareto optimality. A
solution is said to be Pareto optimal 1 if there exists no other feasible solutions that would
decrease any of the objective functions without causing an increase in any of the other
objective functions [6]. The set of the Pareto optimal solutions is called the Pareto front
[6], for the case of two objectives this can easily be visualized in a two-dimensional diagram. From the Pareto front interesting information about the trade-off between different
objectives and how they affect each other can be obtained.
1
Other notations such as efficient or non-inferior are also used in literature [3]
One method of solving the multicriteria optimization problem is by scalarization, i.e., by

transforming the multiple objective functions into a scalar function of the design variables.
The simplest scalarization method is the weighted sum method [3]:
min
x
p
X
wk fk (x),
where f1 , . . . , fk are the objective functions
(2.2)
k=1
By varying the weights wk , different Pareto optimal solutions may be found.

Another approach is to just consider one of the objective functions and constraining
the other, the -constraint method [3]:
min fj (x)
x
(2.3)
subject to fk (x) k , k = 1, . . . , p, k 6= j
The problem is then solved with different values on the constraints k .
2.2
Structural optimization
Structural optimization is one application of optimization. Here the purpose is to find the
optimal material distribution according to some given demands of a structure. Some common functions to minimize are the mass, displacement or the compliance (strain energy).
This problem is most often subject to some constraints, for example constraints on the
mass or on the size of the component.
This optimization is traditionally done manually using an iterative-intuitive process
that roughly consists of the following steps [5]:
1. A design is suggested
2. The requirements of the design is evaluated, for example by a finite element analysis
(FEA)
3. If the requirements are fulfilled, the optimization process is finished. Else, modifications are made, a new improved design is proposed and step 23 are repeated
The result depends heavily on the designers knowledge, experience and intuitive understanding of the problem. Changes to the design are made in an intuitive way, often using
trial and error. This process can be very time consuming and may result in a suboptimal
design.
The problem of structural optimization can, according to Christensen and Klarbring [5],
be separated in three different areas: sizing optimization, shape optimization and topology
optimization, see Figure 2.1.
2.3
Sizing optimization
Sizing optimization is the simplest form of structural optimization. The shape of the
structure is known and the objective is to optimize the structure by adjusting sizes of
the components. Here the design variables are the sizes of the structural elements [5], for
example the diameter of a rod or the thickness of a beam or a sheet metal. See Figure 2.1a
for an example of size optimization where the diameter of the rods are the design variables.
4
(a) Sizing optimization
(b) Shape optimization
(c) Topology optimization
Figure 2.1: Different types of structural optimization
2.4
Shape optimization
As with sizing optimization the topology (number of holes, beams, etc.) of the structure
is already known when using shape optimization, the shape optimization will not result in
new holes or split bodies apart. In shape optimization the design variables can for example
be thickness distribution along structural members, diameter of holes, radii of fillets or
any other measure. See Figure 2.1b for an example of shape optimization. A fundamental
difference between shape vs. topology and size optimization is that instead of having one
or more design variable for each element the design variables in shape optimization each
affect many elements.
2.4.1
Perturbation vector approach
One way of introducing shape changes to the discretized finite element model is with the
perturbation vector approach [7]. First one or more shapes are defined as perturbations
added to the vector of nodal coordinates (r 0 ),
r = r0 + p
(2.4)
By doing a linear combination of the perturbations, the design variables for the optimization can then be defined as the weights of the perturbation vectors. One design variable
per shape vector:
r = r0 +
n
X
wi p i ,
n = number of shapes/design variables
i=1
with limits on weights wimin wi wimax
i = 1, . . . , n
The optimization problem is then to find the optimum set of shape weights.
2.5
Topology optimization
The most general form of structural optimization is topology2 optimization. As with shape
and size optimization the purpose is to find the optimum distribution of material. With
topology optimization the resulting shape or topology is not known, the number of holes,
bodies, etc., are not decided upon. See Figure 2.1c.
From a given design domain the purpose is to find the optimum distribution of material
and voids. To solve this problem it is discretized by using the finite element method3 (FEM)
and dividing the design domain into discrete elements (mesh). The resulting problem is
then solved using optimization methods to find which elements that are material and which
are not. This result in a so called 0-1 problem, the elements either exists or not, which
is an integer problem with two different states for each element, a so called ISE topology
(Isotropic Solid or Empty elements) [10].
The number of different combinations is 2N , where N is the number of elements. As a
normal FE-model easily results in hundreds of thousands of elements, this problem is out
of reach to solve for any practical problem4 [4].
The two main solution strategies for solving the optimization problem with an ISE
topology are the density method and the homogenization method. Other methods, which
will not be further studied, includes using genetic algorithms or heuristic methods such
as evolutionary structural optimization5 (ESO)[10]. Rozvany [11] points out that ESO
is presently fully heuristic, computationally rather inefficient, methodologically lacking
rationality, occasionally unreliable, with highly chaotic convergence curves and that ESO
is now therefore hardly ever used in industrial applications.
2.5.1
Density method
One way to get a problem that can be solved is to relax the problem by letting the material
density take any value between zero and one, i.e., 0 % to 100 % density. By making this
relaxation it is possible to use gradient based optimization methods to find a minimum
of the objective function. The design variable of the optimization problem is the density
which is a function varying over the design domain. In the FE discretization the density
is most often approximated to be constant over each element, the resulting problem thus
has one design variable, the density, per element.
In practice, this also makes it similar to sizing optimization; here the sizes are the
densities of the elements. This relaxation does not have a simple physical explanation.
When considering elements in 2D the density could be represented as a varying thickness
of a plate. In 3D there is no similar counterpart; a solid with 50 % material is neither
physically reasonable nor very intuitive.
Topology optimization using this problem formulation is called the density method. To
get a result which is possible to manufacture, it is desired that the solution only consists
of solid or empty elements, to make it behave more like an ISE topology. To approach
this behavior intermediate densities are penalized, i.e., the cost of intermediate densities is
higher compared to the relative stiffness. This will make intermediate densities unfavorable.
Without penalty the relation stiffnessmaterial cost is linear, E = E 0 where E is the
2
Topology is an area of mathematics that studies properties of geometric objects that depend on the
shape, but not size, distances or angles; properties that are independent of any continuous deformation
[8]. From a topological point of view a coffee mug and a donut can be said to be equivalent since they
both have exactly one hole. A coffee mug can by smooth deformations be transformed into a donut, but
not into a sphere (zero holes) or a tea pot (two holes).
3
It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the finite element method. For an introduction to the
topic please refer to Ottosen and Petersson [9]
4
For example: a model with 10 000 elements would result in 210000 103010 number of combinations.
If it was possible to evaluate one millions combinations per second, testing all of the combinations would
take about 3.17 102996 years.
5
Evolutionary structural optimization use some criterion, e.g., von Mises stress, to eliminate elements
in every iteration [11].
Figure 2.2: Relative stiffness as a function of density with different penalization factors
[12]
elasticity tensor and is the density, 0 1. One popular method to achieve penalized
intermediate densities is by letting the stiffness of the material be expressed as [4]:
E= E ,
Z
Mass =
d,
p>1
(2.5)
When the densities are assumed constant over each element the density-stiffness relation
can be implemented simply by scaling the element stiffness matrices before assembling
them into the global stiffness matrix:
K e = pe K 0e
(2.6)
Where p is a penalization factor greater than zero, typically 2 5. The resulting coststiffness relation can be seen in Figure 2.2. In literature the density method together
with this penalization is often called the SIMP method (Solid Isotropic Microstructures
with Penalization) [10]. Unfortunately this penalization will make even the problem of
minimizing compliance a nonconvex problem6 , thus finding the global optimum will be
very difficult [10].
The unphysical aspect of this fictitious material used in the density method led to
that the adoption of this method was delayed by almost a decade [10]. This problem was
later solved by Bendse and Sigmund [13] who managed to find a physical interpretation
of intermediate densities by constructing microstructures from voids and material that
realizes the material properties, with some limits on the penalization factor (for example,
p 3 when = 1/3 due to the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds7 [14]). See Figure 2.3.
The classical topology optimization problem of minimizing the compliance while constraining the mass can with the density method, assuming linear elasticity, can be formu6
7
A convex problem have only one local minima, which coincides with the global minima
A theoretical limit on the elasticity for composite materials
Figure 2.3: Microstructures realizing the material properties with p = 3 and = 1/3 [13]
lated as8 :
min C() = F T u()

T
a=V
s.t.
min e max , e = 1, . . . , n
(2.7)
Where = [1 , . . . , n ]T is the design vector consisting of the element densities and a =

[a1 , . . . , an ]T is the vector of element areas. The displacements are easily found as u() =
K 1 ()F
Two of the main advantages of the density method are that it does not require much
extra memory, only one free variable is needed per element (the density) and that any
combination of design constraints can be used [10].
2.5.2
Homogenization method
The main idea of the homogenization method is that a material density is introduced by
representing the material as a microstructure. The microstructure is a composite material
with an infinite number of infinitely small voids [13]. This leads to a porous composite that
can have a density varying between 0 % and 100 %. Some common types of microstructure
are solids with square or rectangular holes or some sort of layered microstructure, see
Figure 2.4. Since the macroscopic properties of the microstructure are not isotropic an
orientation angle is also needed [15].
For a layered microstructure the elasticity can be found analytically, but for most other
types of microstructures the elasticity needs to be calculated numerically by using the finite
element method for different sizes and then interpolating between these values [15, 4]. The
microstructures do by themselves provide some penalization on intermediate densities but
this is most often not enough and some additional penalization needs to be introduced [10].
The optimization is then carried out similarly to the density method. The problem is
discretized into finite elements with the design variables (hole sizes and rotation) assumed
to be constant over each element.
8
This is called a nested formulation [5] since the equilibrium constraint K()u = F is taken into
account by letting u() = K 1 F . In a simultaneous formulation the equilibrium equation would be
included as an equality constraint function
Figure 2.4: Examples of microstructures with rotation in 2D: a) Microstructure with rectangular holes and b) Layered microstructure [12]
One obvious disadvantage of the homogenization method is that more design variables
per element are required than when using the density method. Also, and maybe even more
serious is that currently the homogenization can only be used for optimization with the
compliance as cost function or constraint [10].
2.5.3
Checkerboarding
One common problem that arises in topology optimization for both the density and the
homogenization method is checkerboarding. Checkerboarding refers to the checkerboard
pattern that is formed with alternating elements with density of 1 and elements with
density of 0. The cause of this is that in the discretized finite element model the stiffness
for elements just connected by the corners are greatly exaggerated [11]. This together
with the common practice to use one design variable per element and using penalization
of intermediate densities will lead to checkerboard patterns. This can for example not
happen with shape optimization since shape optimization has global support, i.e, each
design variable affect many elements.
There exists many different methods to suppress checkerboarding, this includes
Higher-order finite element e.g., in 2D, instead of using 4-noded rectangular elements 8-noded elements are used. One obvious drawback of this method is that
more computational work is needed since the number of degrees of freedom (DOF)
is greatly increased [16].
Filter a filter is used in each iteration that smoothes the density. The density of
one element is averaged with respect to elements in the neighborhood
Different discretization of FE-model and design variables The mesh for the design
variables are coarser than the finite elements, each design variable controls the density
of more than one element [11]
Density slope control9 The local gradient of the element densities is restricted to
some value [17]
The filter and the density slope control method can also be modified to prevent meshdependency by enforcing a minimum member size.
A variant of this method is implemented in Optistruct, first the optimization is performed with a
constraint on the density slope, then the optimization constraint is relaxed to get clearly defined members,
see Zhou [17] for details.
10
Overview of Used Tools
Here the most important software used in this thesis will be briefly described. The main
program used for performing finite element analyses and optimizations is the solver Optistruct 10.0 from Altair Engineering [7]. There are also other available software for design
optimization such as Tosca [18] and MSC.Nastran topology optimization [19]. In this thesis
Optistruct is chosen as optimization software by request of Saab Microwave System. To
be able to set up the problem and review the results HyperMesh and HyperView are also
used. HyperMesh is the preprocessor which is used to discretize (mesh) a CAD model,
set boundary conditions, properties and options and to set up the problem to be solved
(optimization, static analysis, modal analysis etc.). From HyperMesh a file which completely describes the problem is exported and then processed using Optistruct. The results
from Optistruct can then be evaluated using the postprocessor HyperView. A schematic
overview of the workflow can be seen in Figure 3.1.
HyperMesh, Optistruct and HyperView are all part of the software suite Hyperworks
10.0, and as such they are designed to easily integrate with each other.
Figure 3.1: An overview of the workflow in Hyperworks
3.1
Optistruct
As mentioned before, Optistruct is the solver used for performing structural optimization.
Optistruct started out as a research code at a university research lab in 1991 [20]. The
only problem solved was the minimization of weighted compliance and/or eigenfrequencies
using the homogenization method (the homogenization method is described in Section 2.5.2
above). In 1993 the first commercial version was marketed as Altair Optistruct 1.0. The
current version of Optistruct is 10.0 from 2009.
Optistruct do not have any graphical interface, the full problem formulation is made
using HyperMesh and any other options are supplied via the command line.
3.1.1
Features
Optistruct is capable of performing a range of different finite element analyses including

static, modal, buckling and thermal analyses. Different types of loads such as point forces,
pressure, gravitational loads, thermal loads, etc., can be applied [7].
When setting up the FE model many different types of elements are supported including: different types of three-dimensional solid elements, two-dimensional shell elements and
other types of elements such as beams, bars, springs and point masses.
11
Optistruct is also the program that is used for performing the structural optimization in
this work (see Section 2.2 for structural optimization). The supported types of optimization
in Optistruct include:
Topology optimization of 2D and 3D domains
Free-size optimization, find the optimal thickness distribution of shell elements
Shape optimization from user-defined shapes
Free-shape optimization, selected boundary nodes may move without user-defined
shapes
Topography optimization, find the best reinforcement pattern of a shell structure
Size optimization, design variable are for example a shell thickness or cross-section
of beams or rods.
The method used for topology optimization in Optistruct is depending on the problem10
either the density method or the homogenization method [20, 7]. See Section 2.5.1 and
2.5.2. Shape optimization is performed using the perturbation vector approach, see Section
2.4.1.
3.2
Usage
Here the procedure for setting up and performing an optimization using the Hyperworks
software suite will be described. The types of optimization of interest are topology/freesize and shape optimization. The optimization problem in Optistruct is set up in roughly
the same way for each type of optimization. The required steps are:
Acquire/create a FE model
Define design variables and constraints on the design variables
Define responses that will be used as objective or constraints
Formulate optimization objective
If desired, set constraints on responses
Most of the engineers work is done in HyperMesh and HyperView.
3.2.1
FE modeling
A discretized FE model will always be needed when performing an optimization with

Optistruct. This is normally created by importing a CAD-model into HyperMesh where it
is meshed using the available tools. The resulting FE model should strive to capture the
behavior of the modeled component. This is done by representing the modeled component
with different types of elements of varying sizes. There is always a trade-off between
accuracy and computational cost. Details on how to perform the discretization is beyond
the scope of this work. However, a few different meshes should be used to ensure sufficient
accuracy.
10
12
The method is chosen automatically by Optistruct depending on what responses are used
Table 3.1: Common responses used as objective or constraint

Responses from design
Mass
Volume
Mass fraction
Volume fraction
can be calculated from the whole model or

just from some properties
average density, only applicable for topology

optimization
Responses from load cases

Weighted compliance
Weighted eigenfrequencies
Static displacement
Static stress
Temperature
Buckling
is calculated from one or more static load

cases
on one or more nodes
can not be used with topology or free-size
optimization11
thermal responses can not be used with
topology or free-size optimization
can not be used with topology or free-size
optimization
A key difference when performing a topology optimization versus a shape optimization

is that for topology optimization the resulting FE model is a mesh of the whole design
domain while for shape and size optimization the mesh is just of the existing component.
In the FE modeling phase boundary conditions, loads and load cases must also be set
up. If the objective of the optimization is to, for example, maximize the eigenfrequencies,
then a load step that calculates the desired eigenfrequencies must be defined.
3.2.2
Optimization objective constraints
Both the objective and different constraints are defined in a similar way in Optistruct.
First a response needs to be created. A response is a numerical measure of some aspect
on the design variables or an analysis on the model. The response can then be used either
as an objective function or as a constraint. Optistruct supports many different responses;
some of the more important can be seen in Table 3.1.
It is also possible to put geometric constraints on the design, for example:
Extrusion constraint forces the design to have the same cross-section in a specified
direction, or along a curve
Draw direction constraint makes the design not have any cavities in one direction,
to make it possible to manufacture the component by casting
Symmetry constraint symmetry in 1, 2 or 3 planes or cyclic symmetry (rotational)
3.2.3
Here the steps required to perform a topology optimization will be described and a brief
review of the most important options will be presented. This assumes that a FE-model of
11
Stress constraints can be applied to topology optimization in a special way

13
the problem is available and different properties 12 are used for the design and non-design
elements. All of the manual work with setting up the problem for topology optimization
is done using HyperMesh.
The minimum requirements for performing a topology optimization are that a design
variable has been set and that an objective function has been defined. The order of setting
up the problem is not important; the following steps can be performed in any order.
Design variables A natural first step is to start with creating the design variable for
the optimization. The design variable tells Optistruct which elements which are subject
for optimization. Also, the design variable may have some options connected to it such as
manufacturing constraints, stress constraints and minimum/maximum member size.
The design variable is created by using the corresponding dialog in HyperMesh, the
design elements are chosen by selecting one or more properties in HyperMesh. Thus the
design elements need to be distinguished from non-design elements by having different
properties. Only solid or shell elements can be used as design elements.
Constraints on design variables Apart from the constraints on the optimization (mass
constraint etc.) it is possible to set constraints directly on the design variables. These are
defined in same dialog as where the design variables are created. The different types of
design constraints are different manufacturing constraints such as setting a draw direction
(casting constraint), extrusion constraint or symmetry constraints.
This is also how stress constraints are applied to a topology optimization problem. Additionally, minimum or maximum member size control can be applied. Minimum member
control is recommended since it suppresses checkerboard patterns, see Section 2.5.3. The
Optistruct help files [7] recommend a minimum member size of at least three times the
element size.
Objective function and constraints Exactly one objective must be defined to perform
the optimization. This objective may be to either maximize or minimize a previously
defined response, see Section 3.2.2, Table 3.1 for some different responses that can be used.
One or more constraints on the responses may also be defined by setting an upper
and/or lower bound.
3.2.4
Shape optimization
Shape optimization is performed similarly as the topology optimization. The main difference is in how the design variables are defined.
Design variables There are two different ways of setting up the shape optimization for
Optistruct, free-shape and normal shape optimization. For a normal shape optimization
a design variable is defined by first creating a shape, or deformation, using a module in
HyperMesh called Hypermorph. With Hypermorph it is possible to create shape changes by
using a wide range of methods. See Section 2.4.1 for a brief explanation of the perturbation
vector approach used in Optistruct.
When a shape has been defined with Hypermorph a design variable is easily created
from the shape, together with bounds on maximum or minimum magnitude of the shape
change.
12
14
Properties are defined using HyperMesh and describes an element by type, material, etc.
The second method is the free-shape approach. With free-shape optimization it is

sufficient to choose a set of nodes on the boundary. Optistruct will then use a proprietary
method [7] to automatically define shape changes to alter the boundary. Constraints can
also be set on how the nodes are allowed to move, for example on a plane or along a line
etc. It is also possible to use the manufacturing constraints mentioned in the previous
section about topology optimization.
Objective function and constraints The method of setting up the objective function
and any constraints on the responses is the same as for topology optimization, see Section
3.2.3. But with shape optimization it is possible to use some additional responses such as
buckling factor or temperature as constraint or objective.
3.2.5
Size optimization
Size optimization is performed similar to topology and shape optimization. The design
variables are set by choosing some numerical value to be changed such as thickness of a
shell, various properties of beam, etc. These design variables can also be set to take discrete
values or choose between a set of predefined values.
15
Trial Cases
To achieve knowledge and understanding of how optimization can be used in the design
process a couple of different trial cases have been evaluated. The work was performed as
pilot cases starting from specifications and limitations and ending up with proposals for
final products. In some of the cases, specifications and limitations were only partly known.
The steps to reach a reasonable resulting design using the tools of HyperWorks were to be
found out during the work process. An iterative process using a method of trial-and-error
was used. Many of the different approaches led to unsatisfactory results which, although
they gave an increased understanding of the problem, will not be presented here.
Here the work is described step by step from the definition of the problems to the
analysis of the resulting design and an evaluation of the used method.
4.1
Trial case: Fixture
The fixture is to be designed to hold a test object of weight 1 kg during vibration testing
from 1 Hz to 2000 Hz. Since the fixture should not affect the test results it is desired that
the first resonance frequency of the fixture with mounted test object is at least 2500 Hz.
It should also be possible to fasten the fixture to the shake board, which is done with M10
bolts placed in a square pattern with 70 mm c/c. Bolt holes for the test object are also
required and they need to be accessible from both sides to enable assembly of the test
object. Also, the material can not be too thick at these locations since the bolts have a
certain maximum length. The test object must be fastened on a plane with an angle of
45 relative to the shake board.
The goal of the optimization is to find a design of the fixture with the lowest eigenfrequency at least 2500 Hz and to make the structure as lightweight as possible. A low weight
is desired to not impair the shaking properties of the shake board and 2500 Hz is chosen
to have a margin of safety.
The optimization of the fixture was approximately made using the following steps:
1. Formulate requirements and objective
2. Set up design domain
3. Perform topology optimization
4. Realize concept
5. Analyze realized design
4.1.1
Design domain
The first, most simple, design domain was made to satisfy just one limitation, the sloping
plane to put the test object (TO) on. A solid, five sided aluminum structure was built
for this purpose. After an initial optimization the resulting structure was found to make
it impossible to mount the test object, instead the domain was redesigned to meet such
demands. Two different parts of the domain were then identified: The base plate (BP)
which connects the structure to the shake board, and the mid part (MP) which holds
the test object. It was then assumed that the BP could be taken out of the domain
and considered rigid during optimization of the MP. The plan was to place the optimized
structure of the MP on the BP in a later stage. Voids of width 20 mm were constructed
behind the bolts points to make the bolts accessible from behind, see Figure 4.1. It was
16
important to define these voids at an early stage since optimization without voids would
result in structures in which the bolts are not accessible. The thickness of the material
between the bolt points and the voids was chosen to be 10 mm.
Figure 4.1: The design domain of the mid part seen from behind with the two voids for
assembling bolts from behind
4.1.2
The bottom of the MP was constrained in all DOFs to simulate that it was fixed to the
BP. Four point masses simulated the test object.
Constraining eigenfrequencies When optimization is performed to increase the frequency of the first mode the frequency of higher modes will not be taken into account by
Optistruct. While the mass is decreased and the first frequency held constant during a
number of optimization iterations, modes of higher order will have their frequencies decreased. This continues until the frequency of a higher mode decreases below the first
mode, resulting in a new first mode. Optistruct will then only take the new first mode into
account while continuing the optimization process leading to a new switch of frequencies
etc. The oscillating objective function or constraint makes the objective non-differentiable
which leads to a diverging solution [21].
During the work it has been found out that this phenomenon often occurs while constraining or maximizing the first eigenfrequency in this manner. However, there is a
workaround of the problem using constraints on the mean value of a couple of the lowest
eigenfrequencies. The constraint is then set up as
Cfreq
n
X
wi
i=1
(4.1)
where n is the number of eigenfrequencies to be accounted for, the maximum number

possible in Optistruct is n = 6. The choice of n depends on the geometry and is found by
trial and error. A too small number gives an oscillating objective while a too large number
gives a longer solution time. wi are weight factors where the default value of wi = 1 is
a good choice since the lower modes already are prioritized by the characteristics of the
constraint formulation. Note that the reciprocal eigenvalues are used instead of frequencies
and the constraining constant Cf req is chosen as an upper limit instead of a lower as in
the case of constraining the first frequency discussed above. The value of Cfreq is found by
hand calculations but often has to be changed iteratively until the optimization gives a set
of eigenfrequencies in the required range.
The penalization factor (DISCRETE) for intermediate element densities is chosen to 3 to
get a clearly defined result and the minimum member size is chosen to 15 mm in order to
get a mesh independent solution.
17
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 4.2: Results from topology optimization and the following realization of concept.
The optimization problem is then set up as follows:
Design domain: mid part
Minimize mass
Constraints on eigenfrequencies:
Pn
wi
i=1 i
2 109 , n = 6
The computational time for this problem was 24 minutes on an 8 GiB, 3 GHz dual core
computer. The resulting topology can be seen in Figure 4.2a.
The resulting first eigenfrequency was f1 = 2816 Hz and the mass of the supports was
about 0.4 kg. Since the BP was considered as rigid at this stage the value of f1 had to be
higher than 2500 Hz as it would decrease when the BP was introduced to the model. Many
other optimizations were formulated and performed, e.g. with the test object modeled as
one point mass on a rigid element, connected to the MP by bolts. The results differed in
details but all led to the same conceptual design. This indicates that the result used for
the next step was not a local but a global optimum.
4.1.3
Realization of concept
From the results of the topology optimization a concept of the design could be realized,
see Figure 4.2. According to the results the supports should be formed as two equal units
that are symmetrical and consisting of two walls of width 17 mm and a roof of predefined
thickness 10 mm, leaning with an angle of 45 . All dimensions for the concept design were
translated from the topology optimization. A simple CAD model which also included the
BP with bolt holes could now be made in ProEngineer. The thickness of the BP was set
to 30 mm as an initial guess.
Analysis of realized concept The CAD model was then imported to HyperMesh where
it was meshed, constrained by bolts and point masses were added, the mass of the aluminum
structure was now 5.6 kg. An eigenvalue analysis was then performed which resulted in
f1 = 2451 Hz which, as expected, was a bit lower than for the MP only. However, this
verifies that the realization is reasonable.
4.1.4
Conclusions
The topology optimization resulted in a design concept which, when realized, ended up in
a design with the first resonance frequency in the desired range. This rough design could
18
be further improved by performing a shape optimization. The results indicate that this
method of using topology optimization with constraints on the eigenfrequencies is capable
of producing a good design concept.
4.2
Trial case: Clip
The considered component is a clip used to hold a circuit board in place. The clip is fastened
with double bolts. See Figure 4.3 for the original design of the clip. The material is assumed
Figure 4.3: Original design of clip

to be aluminum with the following properties: E = 70 GPa, = 0.33, y = 245 MPa.
From now on only half of the clip will be considered due to symmetry. This saves both
computational time and manual work required to set boundary conditions, properties, etc.
The results from the FE-analysis will be the same.
4.2.1
Problem formulation
Loading The clip is fastened with two reduced M3 bolts. The cross sectional area of
the reduced bolts are 3.14 mm2 which can be compared to normal M3 bolts with a cross
sectional area of 5.03 mm2 . The forces from the bolt is assumed to be same as the pre-load,
which is often set to be 60 % of the maximum force the bolt can carry before yielding. This
gives the load:
Ff = 0.6 Ab y = 0.6 3.14 600 1.1 kN
Boundary conditions The supports seen in Figure 4.4 are locked in the x-direction (the
up direction); the rear support is also locked in the z-direction (front). At the symmetry
plane, symmetry boundary conditions are applied: translational DOFs are locked in ydirection and rotational DOFs are locked along the x- and z-axis.
Objective The objective is to minimize the mass while keeping the stresses within safe
levels. Safe levels are for simplicity assumed to be 80 % of the yield stress, which in this
case is
max = 0.8 y = 196 MPa
There are also constraints on the design due to the fact that the component should be
feasible to manufacture. The component is created by extrusion. Therefore the topology
has to be the same throughout the material in the y-direction, with the exception of the
19
Figure 4.4: Drawing of boundary conditions
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.5: (a) FE model of the original clip. (b) Stresses exceeding 100 MPa. The maximum stress is about 160 MPa, ignoring stress concentrations at the fixed nodes and from
the applied load
holes for the bolts which are added after the extrusion. Additional holes may also be
possible.
Static analysis of original design As a first step a static analysis of the original
component is performed. The FE-model, complete with boundary conditions and external
forces can be seen in Figure 4.5a. This also calculates the mass of the (half) clip to be
1.88 g. The force is applied at the nodes closest to the hole using rigid links and this will
result in artificial high stress concentrations on those elements. Solving for the static load
case results in stresses according to Figure 4.5b.
4.2.2
The optimization problem was formulated in Optistruct as:

Objective: minimize mass
Stress constrained to a maximum of 196 MPa
Extrusion constraint in the y-direction
Minimum member size: 2 mm
Intermediate densities penalty (DISCRETE) = 3
20
Figure 4.6: Results from topology optimization, red areas have high density and blue areas
low
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.7: Realization of concept. (a) The CAD-model of the clip imported along with the
design concept from the topology optimization. (b) The realized design concept, created by
adjusting the original clip
The design domain is chosen to be slightly larger than the original clip, although this
turned out to be unnecessary as the resulting topology did not exceed the boundary of the
original clip. Results from the topology optimization can be seen in Figure 4.6
4.2.3
Realization of concept
The post-processing capabilities of Hyperworks (OSSmooth) are used to produce a CADmodel from the results from the topology optimization that can be used as a guideline
when realizing the concept. OSSmooth is run with a density tolerance of > 0.7, ignoring
elements with a lower density. The resulting CAD-model is imported along with the model
of the original design, see Figure 4.7a. The original clip model is then adjusted to the
design concept from the optimization. Only the outer boundary is considered cavities
are ignored, see Figure 4.7b. The resulting clip has a mass of 1.32 g, which is 70 % of the
mass of the original design.
Static analysis of realized model A static analysis is performed on the realized model,
maximum stress is about 180 MPa. This is slightly higher than for the original clip.
21
Figure 4.8: Stresses of the shape optimized clip

4.2.4
Shape optimization
To improve the design a shape optimization is performed on the realized model. This is
done by using free-shape optimization in Optistruct. With free-shape optimization it is
sufficient to choose which nodes on the boundary that should be able to move, it is not
needed to define the shape perturbations. The objective is the same as before; minimize
the mass with constraints on the maximum stress.
The resulting shape and stresses can be seen in Figure 4.8. The weight of the shape
optimized clip is reduced to 1.15 g, 61 % of the original clip, the maximum stress is about
181 MPa which is lower than before the shape optimization. Note that the front end is very
thin and may be at risk for buckling. A buckling analysis gives that the buckling factor is
just above unity and thus the front end is at risk for buckling and should be reinforced.
4.2.5
Conclusions
This procedure of optimizing the clip was straightforward and resulted in a design that
was lighter and at the same time fulfilled the requirements. No buckling requirements
were defined prior to the work and the somewhat small buckling factor may be a problem.
This shows that properties that are not optimized for are out of control and hence may be
arbitrary bad.
If the requirements admit, an additional topology optimization could be performed with
a different design domain. It would be interesting to see if an increase in the thickness
of the design domain could result in a lighter or stronger design. The shape optimization
that would follow should then contain buckling requirements.
4.3
Trial case: TRU
The TRU (Transceiver Receiver Unit) consists of supporting structure made of a base and
sheet metals and different components. The parts are put together with bolts of varying
dimensions.
The objective is to improve the TRU by optimizing the supporting structure with the
objective of increasing the eigenfrequencies and decreasing the mass.
4.3.1
FE-modeling
The TRU is a complicated structure and consists of a lot of different parts held together
by a large amount of bolts. Structural parts, with the exception of the base, are modeled
as 2-dimensional shell elements, the base is modeled with solid elements and the electronic
components are modeled as point masses with rigid links. The bolts are modeled as beam
elements.
22
Figure 4.9: FE model of TRU unit

The weight of the complete meshed structure was 273 kg, which can be compared to
the actual TRU with a weight of 274 kg. The complete meshed TRU unit can be seen in
Figure 4.9.
4.3.2
Aim and loading conditions
The aim is to make the TRU lighter under the mechanical requirement that it must withstand different types of dynamical loads without any yielding of the material. For this
purpose an equivalent quasi-static load of 30 g, which will cover the dynamic response of
the mechanical requirements, is applied in the X-, Y- and Z-directions. The structure
should also have the first eigenfrequency as high as possible, preferably over 35 Hz.
To limit the required work only the center wall is considered for optimization.
4.3.3
Static and modal analyses were performed on the existing TRU. The first eigenfrequency
was found to be 35.3 Hz. The mass of the original center wall is 3.5 kg.
The center wall consists of 15 mm aluminum sheet metal which has been milled to 2 mm
in the middle to reduce the weight. It is therefore natural to do a topology or free size
optimization where the objective is to find the optimal thickness distribution of the shell
elements.
The simplest case of optimization is the minimization of compliance with a constraint
on the mass. In this case the mass is constrained to the mass of the original wall and
the objective is to minimize the compliance when applying a gravity load in the x- and
y-direction.
The results from the optimization can be seen in Figure 4.10. The resulting compliances
are 1.786 437 105 J and 7.399 670 104 J respectively for the x- and y-direction. This is
slightly worse than for the original wall.
4.3.4
Conclusions
Several different ways of formulating the optimization problem of the wall were tested,
among others:
Minimization of compliance, with loading in one or several directions
23
Figure 4.10: Density distribution from topology optimization of centre wall

Maximization of the first eigenfrequency or a maximization of a weighted average of
eigenfrequencies
Minimization of mass with different constraints on eigenfrequencies, stresses, etc.
Optimization with different definitions on the design and non-design areas
Optimization with many different combinations of parameters
In summary, none resulted in any design that was a noticeable improvement of the original
design. This was due to a number of causes. To begin with the center wall did not have
as big effect on the characteristics of the complete system as initially thought. The loads
that the center wall had to withstand were not very big. Also, the weight of the center
wall was only 3.5 kg, which can be compared to the weight of the whole system which is
273 kg, so any substantial weight savings could not be found by optimizing the wall.
Due to the many design constraints on the wall, mostly from prescribed bolt holes (45
holes), there were not very much that could be optimized. There was a minimum thickness
of 2 mm to get a shielding wall, and a thickness 15 mm to be able to put the bolt holes.
When the material for the base thickness and extra material near bolt holes have been
used there is not very much left that can be changed.
Finally due to the complexity of the system the resulting optimization problem was
highly non-linear and difficult to solve. For example, when some material is removed the
wall will be less stiff and this results in that the forces of the wall decreases since the other
parts instead are taking care of those forces. Often the optimization resulted in results
that were worse than for the original wall (as in the example above).
4.4
Trial case: Strut for airborne radar
The struts for an airborne radar are to be studied and optimized for increased performance
and minimized weight. The work is divided into three parts: conceptual optimization,
detailed optimization, and finally, an analysis of the resulting structure.
4.4.1
Geometry
The strut is an extruded aluminum profile with a steel tube along the center connected
to one circular beam of high strength steel at each end. In the small gap between the
aluminum profile and the steel tube a sticky filling is used. The beams are fastened to
24
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.11: (a) Strut with steel beam seen from the side. (b) Cross section of the design
domain, extruded holes of the original design are filled. The steel tube consists of the green
elements. Red elements are made from aluminum, of which the light red elements are
elements subjected to topology optimization.
Table 4.1: Load cases for whole strut, margin of safety is included in the loads
Load
Air load
Symmetric bird load
Asymmetric bird load
Compressive force
Description
Distributed along the front edge
Acting at the middle of front edge
Acting at middle of front edge and side
Acting at the two rod ends
the radar unit and aircraft body by rod ends. To decrease computational work symmetry
is used at the middle of the strut on a plane perpendicular to it. The geometry of the
problem is seen in Figures 4.11a and 4.11b.
The outer boundary of the original structure consisting of the aerodynamic profile and
the inner radius of the steel tube is used when defining the design domain for topology
optimization, see Figure 4.11b. Discretized, the domain consists of 72 242 elements and
75 447 nodes giving 225 441 degrees of freedom.
4.4.2
Load cases
There are four load cases that may be critical to the strut while in service and therefore
have to be taken into account during optimization. A summary of the load cases is found
in Table 4.1
The bird loads used here are higher than those designing the original strut. The bird
will split by the cutting edge of the original strut meanwhile the profile considered here
will result in a more energy consuming deformation generating higher loads.
Bird model The loads are based on a strike of a cylindrical shaped bird of length
L = 2D = 213 mm and a mass of 1.8 kg. The velocity of the bird relative to the aircraft
is 128 m/s. The bird strike generates dynamic loads on the strut and the equivalent static
loads have been calculated prior to this thesis work.
Symmetric bird strike The strut must be able to withstand the loads created when a
bird strikes the middle (at equal distance from the radar and the aircraft hull) of the strut
at the same time as air loads are present. For a symmetric hit, the scenario when the bird
25
hits the middle of the strut is supposed to be the most critical and is therefore designed
for. The positioning of the air load and bird load are seen in Figure 4.12 and 4.13.
Figure 4.12: The air load applied on the front are seen from the side. Constraints are not
visible.
Asymmetric bird strike A bird may just as likely hit the strut a bit off-center to the
right or the left on the front. As in the case of a symmetric strike, a hit on the middle of
the length of the strut is considered the most critical scenario.
Linear buckling The critical buckling load is specified to be more than Pc > 108.8 kN.
Buckling analysis however, can not be performed during topology optimization in Optistruct and therefore a measure of the bending stiffness of the strut in the direction of the
first buckling mode is introduced. In this way the area moment of inertia can be designed.
Based on Eulers first buckling case and Euler-Bernoulli beam theory the largest affordable
displacement at the symmetry plane of the strut due to a force at the same location is calculated, see Figure 4.13b. Using F = 1 kN in (4.2) and (4.3) gives uy,max = 7.40 mm. This
method of dimensioning the strut for buckling has been proven to work out accurately in
a reference analysis. Eulers first buckling for half of the strut is seen in equation (4.2):
4Pc L2
2 EI
I= 2
Pc =
4L2
E
(4.2)
Insertion in the governing Euler-Bernoulli beam equation using given values results in (4.3):
u=
4.4.3
F L3
F L 2
=
= 7.40 mm
3EI
12Pc
(4.3)
Aim and Limitations
The strut, as it turns out, is constructed stable enough to withstand the load cases above
without stresses exceeding the yield stress of s = 225 MPa. What is interesting is to find
out if it is possible to find a structure that is lighter and still fulfills the criteria of buckling
load and maximum stress. A safety margin of 1.5 is already added to the given loads.
The structure is limited by the aerodynamic outer profile and the inner steel tube. It is
also defined that there must be a minimum thickness of aluminum around the steel tube.
The fastening layer between the aluminum and steel is considered as ideal. Further the
structure must be able to be constructed by extrusion and it must be symmetric in the
direction of travel to avoid lateral forces.
4.4.4
Conceptual design
This section describes how a concept has been formed.

26
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.13: (a) The symmetric static pressure generated by bird. Together with the air load
this describes the first load case. (b) The force and measurement position for dimensioning
of buckling properties.
Optimization Topology optimization in Optistruct is used to find the basic topology of
a structure so that a concept can be refined. The cross section of the design domain can be
seen in Figure 4.11b. When running topology optimization with extrusion constraint, it is
not possible to define pattern grouping constraints such as symmetry at the same time.The
only way to still get a symmetric structure is to define load cases of both signs and optimize
with respect to both of them. The two optimization approaches minimization of volume
with constrained stresses as well as minimization of compliance with constrained volume
fraction were tested. It was found out that the first method gave a topology which seemed
unrealistic and had a large proportion of element densities between 0.2 and 0.6. Therefore
compliance minimization and volume fraction constraint have been used for the final and
satisfactory topology optimization, set up as follows:
f (x)
min
x

(4.4)
volume fraction 0.4
s.t.
uy,max 7.8 mm
where x is the vector of design variables, f (x) is the weighted compliance of the load cases
symmetric bird strike, asymmetric bird strike left and asymmetric bird strike right with
weights 1, 0.5 and 0.5 respectively. The constraint of uymax is active just for the loads
designing for buckling, which are defined as a symmetric pair. The resulting topology is
seen in Figure 4.14. Minimum member size is set to 10 mm which is three times the typical
length scale of the elements and the penalty parameter DISCRETE for intermediate element
densities is set to 3 in order to get a clear result.
As seen in Figure 4.14 the result suggests that material shall be put all the way around
the outer boundaries with a large reinforcement at the back tip. A concept is refined from
these observations and realized in a CAD model using ProEngineer.
4.4.5
Detailed design
In counterpart to the conceptual design the exact mass and properties of the strut are
now interesting. The concept acts as a starting point for the detailed optimization where
shape and size of members are to be fine-tuned. The load cases are the same except for
the case dimensioning for buckling since it was found out that the structure is safe in that
27
Figure 4.14: The resulting topology from problem 4.4. Even though the problem was stated
to give a symmetric result it is not entirely symmetric. This is an unwanted consequence
when using extrusion constraint, constraint of minimum member size and a low volume
fraction resulting in not enough material to fulfill the minimum member constraint everywhere without changing topology.
Figure 4.15: Here an almost uniform material thickness has been used around the boundaries except at the back tip were a reinforcement is situated. Material is also put around
the steel tube to hold it fixed. The designable and fixed grid points are highlighted. The
cross section is constant over the length of the strut (into the paper).
regard and the designing load case therefore could be removed. Design variables are now
the grid points at the inner surface of the streut except on surfaces around the steel tube,
see Figure 4.15. The outer boundary and the boundary of the steel tube are also fixed.
The optimization is constrained to move the designable nodes in a plane perpendicular to
the length axis. Demands on symmetry and possibility to extrusion are also present. The
optimization problem is set up according to equation (4.5).
(
minimize mass
(4.5)
s.t. max vonMises < 225 MPa
The optimization did not converge due to element distortion. Therefore three concepts
with small differences were designed in ProEngineer and the best was the last one which
managed to do 7 iterations before the elements got too distorted, the result is seen in
Figure 4.16. This shape was also considered to be the most optimal one under present
circumstances.
A simple study of the mesh dependence is performed by making a coarser mesh of
the concept and run the free shape optimization on that. It is assumed that a coarser
mesh is more robust against element distortion due to change in shape of the boundary.
However this turned out to be a false hypothesis in this application as the optimization
ended prematurely after just 5 iterations. The resulting shape also differs from the one
with a finer mesh which may be a result of the change in step size which is performed
automatically by Optistruct, partly based on mesh size.
28
Figure 4.16: The shape change of optimized strut cross section. Shape change is proportional to the color.
Table 4.2: Properties for the resulting structures
Response
Mass
Max stress, sym. birdload
Max stress, asym. birdload
Max disp. sym. birdload
Max disp. asym. birdload
Critical buckling load
First resonance
Original
14.7 kg
258 MPa
292 MPa
9.7 mm
25.5 mm
183 kN
27.3 Hz
Fully optimized
13.8 kg
420 MPa
560 MPa
10.7 mm
24.5 mm
214 kN
30 Hz
Shape optimized only

13.7 kg
258 MPa
309 MPa
11.5 mm
26.4 mm
180 kN
28.1 Hz
Optimization of original design Free shape optimization is used to find out whether
there is room for improvement of the original strut or not. The same load cases and
optimization problem formulation as above is used. The shape change was found to be
rather small indicating that the design was well dimensioned from the beginning. The
results in absolute numbers are seen in Table 4.2.
4.4.6
Analysis
A static analysis of the properties of the resulting structures is performed to conclude if

any improvement has been attained. The measured responses are mass, maximum stress
and maximum displacement for each load case, critical buckling load and first resonance
frequency. The results are presented in Table 4.2.The cause of the large maximum stresses is
that they are found in the steel tube which has much higher yield limit than the surrounding
aluminum.
The properties are very much alike until it comes to stresses and critical buckling load.
The fully optimized structure has very high stresses in the steel tube caused by bird loads
and it has very good buckling properties. The shape optimization of the original structure
has made it a little bit lighter while the mechanical properties remain almost unchanged.
The aerodynamic aluminum sheet is included in the masses of the original and the shape
optimized only structures. The weight of the aluminum sheet is 0.5 kg.
As seen in Figure 4.16 the walls at the back sides of the strut are made very thin with
risk of giving the structure local eigenmodes with low eigenfrequencies. However, the first
local mode turns out to be at 950 Hz which is considered to be far above the range of
danger.
4.4.7
Conclusions
Minimization of mass combined with stress constraints when performing topology optimization is an approach which may lead to infeasible designs causing error in the optimization
29
process in Optistruct.
One problem which needs to be kept in mind while performing free-shape optimization
is the risk of getting distorted elements; this is not handled in a nice way in Optistruct
which simply crashes.
The only way to produce a convergent solution on a problem like this is to first study
the result of the topology optimization very carefully while designing the concept to limit
the shape change in the following detailed optimization. In addition a mesh of good quality
and robustness must be produced.
Free shape optimization is a relative time consuming method when compared to the
corresponding topology or shape optimization, about 8 times longer per iteration when the
number of elements is almost the same.
4.5
Trial case: Plate for thermal conduction
The possibility to optimize a structure with respect to both thermal and mechanical demands is studied next. The geometry is found from a baseplate of aluminum for a number
of electronic devices and antennas. The plate is supposed to transfer heat from the electronic components to the bottom where it is attached to a cool surface. The difference
in temperature between the cool surface and the components must not be larger than
30 K, and the first resonance frequency must be at a reasonable level. The objective is to
minimize the weight.
Optimization with respect to heat transfer is a completely new feature in Optistruct
and currently the only available methods are shape and size optimization. This limitation
makes it impossible to perform a complete conceptual design through topology or free size
optimization as done in the other trial cases. Therefore a different approach is to be used
by first using free size optimization for mechanical properties and then freeze the obtained
mechanical structure and perform a size optimization on the plate.
However, the results from the thermal optimization turned out to be difficult to interpret and also resulted in designs that were hard to find trustworthy or reasonable. Test
optimizations using other simpler geometries also resulted in confusing outcomes. Very unintuitive designs were suggested by Optistruct with violated constraints and poor results
in terms of heat conduction properties. Therefore the trial case was closed with hope for
future improvement of the software by Altair.
4.6
Trial case: Mounting base for rotating radar
The mounting base for a rotating radar used in service for many years is taken into consideration for a redesign. The mounting base connects the antenna to the revolving board and
is seen in Figure 4.17. The mounting base, which was designed by 2D CAD a few decades
ago, is made of cast aluminum and has a weight of 22 kg and the mass of the antenna is
337 kg.
The present design has a few problems with accessibility of some of the bolt holes
and there may be potential for decreasing the weight. The objective is to come up with
a conceptual design that is improved at these points under the limitations that contact
surfaces must be kept, the inside must be protected from electro magnetic radiation and
three service holes as seen in the figure must be present. The structure must also be possible
to construct mainly by casting. The only mechanical specification is that the mounting
base with the antenna mounted on it must be able to withstand an acceleration of 30 g in
any direction without getting stresses near the yield stress of s = 214 MPa.
30
Figure 4.17: The present outline of the mounting base and the antenna on top of it.
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.18: (a) The solid design domain without service holes. (b) Zoom at two bolt
positions and their respective bolt holes and accessibility voids.
4.6.1
Approach
During the work with this trial case a more automatized approach will be used compared
to some of the other trial cases. A large number of optimizations with slightly differing
setups will be performed followed by a selection of the most effective design to be used as
concept. The concept will then be realized and optimized further.
4.6.2
Design domain
The design domain is chosen as the upper and lower contact surfaces of the mounting base
and the tube connecting them, see Figure 4.18. The three service holes are not introduced
at this step to make it possible to investigate if there might be better positions for them.
Bolt holes and voids to be able to put the bolts in position are introduced. Inner surfaces
and contact surfaces will not be included in the design domain and a symmetry constraint
is introduced to keep the one plane symmetry of the structure. In order to exclude mesh
dependency, two different meshes were used in the beginning and the finer one was used
for the continued optimizations.
31
4.6.3
Loadcases
Accelerations of 30 g in different directions are introduced to the optimization to produce

stiffness in any direction. After a study of robustness, see Section 5.5, where different load
cases were weighted differently in a number of optimization runs it was found that four
different directed accelerations accounted for in the optimization gave good results for all
directions. Those were accelerations in the X-,Y- and Z-directions complemented with an
acceleration in the XY-plane directed 20 from the X-axis. Using more load cases would
not improve the structure but only increase the computation time.
4.6.4
Concept generation
The topology optimization problem was set up as follows:
min(f ) , f =
x
ci (x)
i=1

s.t.
4
X
volume fraction: V volfrac

minimum member size: dmax mindim
where volfrac and mindim are used in a number of different combinations, ci are the
compliances for the individual load cases. The relation between f , volfrac and mindim
were then studied to find the most optimal combination. The total compliance, f , was
plotted against volfrac and mindim leading tho the knowledge that using volfrac = 0.175
and mindim = 1.75 cm gives a structure that is little improved by adding mass or decreasing
minimum member size and yet is relatively easy to interpret. For an example of such a
plot, see Figure 5.1. Positions for the service holes could then be defined at the front and
sides of the structure since no reinforcements were formed there. However, the optimized
structure contained a number of cavities making it impossible to construct by casting and
a redefinition of the design domain had to be done to deal with this problem. Service
holes were added, and the design domain was divided into 11 separate design domains
were each domain was constrained to be able to produce by casting. Each domain got its
own draw direction and a new automatized parameter study was performed, this time also
studying the impact of the parameter maxdim. This parameter is used not to get too large
material formations which can not be made by casting. With a maximum member size of
3 cm, a minimum member size of 1.5 cm and volfrac of 10 % a simple and well performing
structure was formed, see Figure 4.19a. The resulting topology was then interpreted and
realized in a shell model, see Figure 4.19b.
4.6.5
Detailed optimization
The concept was then objected to size optimization where 25 surfaces of the structure had
variable thicknesses. The different regions are seen marked with different colors in Figure
4.19b. In the detailed design process the structure is meant to be fine tuned to the exact
requirements which in this example means that no stresses may exceed the yield stress of
s = 214 MPa with a safety factor of 1.5. To optimize for this the maximum allowed stress
in the structure except for elements close to bolt holes and corners was set to be exactly
the yield stress. The optimization was set up to minimize mass with constrained stress and
all design variables were allowed to vary between 0 and 1.5 cm. The optimization result is
seen in Figure 4.19c.
32
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 4.19: (a) Optimization result with manufacturability constraints and service holes.
(b) Realized concept divided into separate properties. A shell model is used to save time
and make detailed optimization simpler. (c) The size optimized concept, the color of each
surface indicate the material thicknesses from blue at 3 mm to red at 13 mm.
Table 4.3: Properties for the resulting structure
Response
Mass
Max stress, X-acc.
Max stress, Y-acc.
Max stress, Z-acc.
Sum of compliance
4.6.6
Original
21.9 kg
45 MPa
60 MPa
40 MPa
305 Nm
Optimized
16.2 kg
110 MPa
120 MPa
93 MPa
400 Nm
Analysis
In Table 4.3 the properties of the shape optimized and the original structure can be seen.
When using the stress constraint described above the non local stresses became less than
= s /1.5 = 142 MPa as desired.
4.6.7
Conclusions
Automated study of the impact of different parameters is a powerful tool in the beginning
of the optimization process. Instead of using trial and error to find the best optimization
setup an automated generation of optimizations with parameters in a specified range makes
it possible to choose the best setup with less effort and better result. In this trial case it
is seen that the original design might be over sized. A lightening of 5.7 kg gave rise to
perhaps too high stresses but a product lighter than the original still meeting tough safety
demands can most likely be produced. Matters of robustness of this structure are discussed
in Section 5.
33
4.7
Trial case: Strut fitting
The considered strut fitting is the link between the fuselage and two supporting struts
similar to the strut investigated in Section 4.4.
4.7.1
Problem formulation
The current strut fitting is made of steel and weighs approximately 4.73 kg. As this component is mounted on an aircraft it is crucial that the weight is kept to a minimum. The
objective is to minimize the mass while still fulfilling the requirements on allowed stresses.
The loading conditions are given as 8 different load cases, 4 for different bird strikes and
4 load cases due to different steering maneuvers. For simplicity it is assumed that the
Table 4.4: Load cases for the strut fitting from maneuvers, in the axial direction
Load
LC13
LC14
LC3
LC4
Description
Maximum tensile force in the front strut
Maximum compressive force in the front strut
Maximum tensile force in the diagonal strut
Maximum compressive force in the diagonal strut
Table 4.5: Load cases for the strut fitting from bird strike
Strut
Front strut
Front strut
Diagonal strut
Diagonal strut
Load case
Symmetric impact
Asymmetric impact
Symmetric impact
Asymmetric impact
stresses are allowed to have about the same magnitude as for the original strut fitting. The
stresses of the original strut are about 200 MPa for the maneuvers. For the bird strikes the
material is allowed to have some plastic deformations, the largest resulting stresses for a
linear static analysis of the original fitting is about 800 MPa.
4.7.2
The objective in the optimization problem is to minimize compliance while the material
volume fraction is constrained. This optimization is performed for a couple of different
volume fractions to find a structure with the stresses in the specified range. To find a
nice topology that is feasible from a manufacturing point of view an extrusion constraint
is applied and the minimum member size is set to 12 mm. The design domain is chosen to
be a slightly modified version of the original strut fittings, see Figure 4.20a.
A volume fraction of about 50 % results in acceptable stresses from the load cases. The
resulting topology can be seen in Figure 4.20b. One obvious difference from the original
design is that the two rear bolts are not included. Note that the strength of the bolts is
not included in the model and it is therefore needed that an additional analysis of the bolts
is performed. The mass of the design concept is 3.33 kg.
34
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.20: (a) The design domain and (b) the result from the optimization
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.21: (a) New design domain and (b) the result from the optimization with extrusion
constraint
4.7.3
New design domain
From the initial topology optimization it is easily seen that it would be much more effective if the base plate could be moved forward. A new design domain is proposed with
the base plate extended in the front. See Figure 4.21a. Topology optimization with the
objective to minimize the compliance with the volume fraction constrained is performed.
To prevent internal cavities some sort of constraint is also needed on the design variables.
Two different approaches are tested: using a draw direction constraint and by using an
extrusion constraint. The resulting design concept with applied extrusion constraint can
be seen in Figure 4.21b The draw direction constraint results in a topology that is highly
unsymmetrical but inner cavities are effectively suppressed, see Figure 4.22. The resulting
stresses are acceptable.
The mass is 2.3 kg for the concept with extrusion constraint and 1.5 kg for the concept
with draw direction constraint. Additional material is needed to make the base plate, fillets
and other details needed but it is evident that a resulting finished design will be lighter
than the original design which have the mass 4.73 kg.
Figure 4.22: Resulting topology seen from the left and from the right. Draw direction
constraint applied
35
4.7.4
Conclusions
From the initial topology optimization important knowledge regarding the structure were
found. It is seen that the base plate possibly is placed in a suboptimal position and that
the structure may get lighter and stronger if the plate were to be moved. Just by looking
at the problem this insight is not easily realized. The mass of the design concept cannot be
directly translated to the mass of the finished product; additional mass might be needed for
fillets or for manufacturability reasons. But it is clear that a re-design have the potential
to decrease the mass considerably.
36
Figure 5.1: The relation between compliance and volfrac for the trial cases strut fitting
and the clip. Values are scaled such that the maximum is unity. Plots like these are very
valuable when deciding the final weight of the structure contra its stiffness.
Parameter Study
When performing a topology optimization using Optistruct there are many different parameters and options that affect the end result. To get an increased understanding of the
impact of these parameters a parameter study was conducted. The problems that seemed
suitable for a parametric study are some of the trial cases, see Chapter 4. Each parameter
of interest is treated in separate subsections.
Automated processing To automate the process of testing different combinations of
parameter values a simple script was created using the programming language Python.
This script can be used to test many different parameter combinations without the need of
any human interaction after the initial set up. This makes it possible to perform lengthy
calculations during off-work hours and also reduces the risk of simple typing errors and
mix-up of different files. The script source code and a brief explanation can be found in
Appendix A.
5.1
Volume fraction
The parameter volfrac controls what volume fraction of the initial design domain that
shall be used in the optimized structure. The parameter can be introduced to the optimization setup either as the objective or as a constraint where the highest and/or lowest values
are specified. When used as constraint it is always satisfied prior to mechanical constraints
such as eigenfrequencies and deformations and it therefore has a very big impact on the
final solution.
The connection between volfrac and compliance of different structures has been studied resulting in the Pareto fronts in Figure 5.1. The shape of the relation curves have been
found to be much similar for entirely different structures but with a slightly more linear
behavior for structures where the design is predefined to a larger extent.
This kind of study can be interesting in the early stage of topology optimization since it
gives a measure of the possibilities of the continued optimization work. It is also interesting
to study the relation of mass and, in this particular case, stiffness; for example to decide
if an increase in stiffness is worth the required increase in mass.
37
Figure 5.2: The effect of the minimum member parameter, mindim, applied on the mounting base trial case, see Section 4.6. All other parameters are fixed. Increasing minimum
member size leads to a simpler but worse performing topology.
(a) DISCRETE = 0
(b) DISCRETE = 2
Figure 5.3: An increased DISCRETE leads to a clearer distinction between solid and void
elements
5.2
Minimum member size
The minimum diameter any member of the structure is allowed to have is constrained
with the parameter mindim in Optistruct. The benefits of using a sufficient large mindim
are mesh independent solutions, checkerboarding is suppressed and more clear results that
are easier to realize are obtained. On the other hand, the optimization will need more
iterations to reach convergence, the solution will lose optimality and structural members
such as thin surfaces and walls may not be formed. Therefore a minor parameter study
should be done even when the desired minimum member size of the structure is known due
to product specifications.
An example of the impact of mindim on the result in topology optimization can be seen
in Figure 5.2.
5.3
Penalization of intermediate densities DISCRETE
An important parameter for topology optimization is the penalty factor that penalizes
intermediate densities. The definition of the penalty factor can be found in Section 2.5.1.
In Optistruct the setting corresponding to the penalty factor is known as DISCRETE and is
related to the penalty factor as DISCRETE = (p 1) [7].
The DISCRETE parameter is employed in order to achieve a more clear structure. A
low value will result in a structure with a large proportion of elements with intermediate
densities, meanwhile a higher value will give a structure which may be easier to realize due
to a slightly more discrete density distribution, see Figure 5.3. The value may be varied
between zero, which is the default, and up to about four. Larger values may lead to unintuitive structures with bad properties. Since a higher DISCRETE also leads to checkerboarding
some checkerboarding suppression method should be used.
38
(a)
(b)
Figure 5.4: (a) Minimization of mass with stress constraint. (b) Minimization of compliance with the same mass as in (a)
5.4
Stress constraint in topology optimization
In Optistruct it is possible to put a constraint on the maximum stress in a structure. This

could be very useful since it is often the case that the problem is to minimize the mass
while not exceeding some requirements on the stresses. This constraint uses a method to
filter out high stress concentrations around point loads, boundary conditions and stress
concentrations due to the geometry [7].
Different optimizations with the objective of minimizing the mass with a stress constraint have been performed. The results indicate that Optistruct performs an optimization
with the objective of minimizing the compliance and then tries to find a volume fraction
that gives acceptable stresses, i.e., if the stresses are too large more material is added by increasing the volume fraction. See Figure 5.4 for an example of a comparison of optimization
with stress constraint and a normal optimization for minimizing the compliance.
5.5
Robustness
A solution which is stable to changes in designing conditions or performs well for conditions
which it is not designed for is said to be a robust solution. Such conditions can be material
properties, loads, failure of some part of the structure or failure of an adjacent structure.
Note that a structure that is optimal in one particular case cannot be optimal if the
conditions are changed, i.e., a structure that is more robust is also less optimal for the
design case.
In this thesis work robustness due to failure of an adjacent structure and differing loads
have been studied. The result of the studies are individual for the exact problem but gives
an understanding of the method to study robustness.
5.5.1
Designing load cases
Which load cases that are active when optimizing the mounting base, see Section 4.6, were
varied to study differences in the resulting topologies. A number of optimizations were
performed and the resulting compliances of each load case were plotted for each optimization setup. The change in compliance and topology with respect to the optimization set
up is a measure of the robustness. In Figure 5.5 the variation of compliances with respect
to acceleration direction is seen. Several optimizations were performed with variation of
which load cases that it is designed for. It is seen that the characteristics are similar when
the structure is optimized for a load in the 45 -direction only as when optimized for loads
in X,Y, Z, 20 , 45 ,70 directions. This indicates that the optimized design will withstand
loads in any direction of the xy-plane when only designed for a few of them which can save
39
Figure 5.5: The relation between compliance and direction of acceleration, 0 degrees is in
the x-direction and 90 degrees in the y-direction. Each curve describes the compliance for
a structure optimized for stiffness in different directions specified in the label. The legend
should read like this: The first optimization is optimized for loads in the directions x, y,
z, and 20 degrees from the x-axis in the xy-plane. Note the cosines-looking behavior of the
compliance.
Table 5.1: Robustness to bolts failure
Response
Max stress, X-acc.
Max stress, Y-acc.
Max stress, Z-acc.
Sum of compliance
Original
48 MPa, 6.3% increase
316 J, 3.6% increase
Optimized
423 J, 5.8% increase
time.
The values for the unrealized topologies indicate a rather robust behavior due to the
small changes in compliances. For example, designing with respect to loads in the 45 direction only gives almost identical properties as when designing with respect to loads in
six different directions. The symmetry constraint of the mounting base is one reason to
this.
5.5.2
Robustness against failure
The change in stress distribution and compliance due to failure of two bolts at the bottom
of the mounting base was studied for the optimized structure and for the original one.
The relative change is considered to be a measure of the robustness to such a failure. The
results are seen in Table 5.1. The stresses are nonlocal.
The results indicate that the original design is very robust in this case meanwhile the
optimized structure gets stresses above the safety limit and much higher relative changes.
40
Development of Methodology
The objective of this thesis work is to create a methodology of how to use optimization
in the design process at SMW. The methodology will be presented as a flowchart with
recommendations for how to perform the design-process. The flowchart is meant to be
used as a complement to the already existing and more general flowchart developed by
SMW.
In order to produce a robust and usable methodology it is developed based on experience and conclusions from the trial cases and parameter study together with thoughts
of designers and engineers at SMW. Methodologies similar to the one presented below are
described by Shin et al. [22] and Krog [23] as well as in internal reports at SMW. According to those and own conclusions, topology, shape and size optimization can be applied
mainly in two areas of the design process: topology optimization in the concept design
and shape and size optimization in the detailed design. The main steps of the proposed
methodology can be seen in the flowchart in Figure 6.1. How to perform the optimization
with Optistruct is briefly described in Chapter 3. Here an overview of the methodology is
presented, the more detailed and practical methodology can be found in Appendix B.
Figure 6.1: The basic steps of the methodology presented in a flowchart
6.1
Concept generation
During this initial phase preliminary specifications are used to set up topology optimizations that result in different topologies which are to be refined into one or more concepts.
41
A concept in this application is characterized by a structure were positions, connections,

relative sizes and the like are defined but not confirmed for the structural units. A successful result of this phase is a structure that fulfills all the requirements and that is possible
to realize in a manufacturable concept.
The process starts with a topology optimization based on preliminary requirements of
geometrical interface, mechanical responses, load cases and manufacturability constraints.
All requirements, with exception for the load cases and mechanical responses, are first
defined loosely to get an understanding of the problem and an idea of what the final
structure may look like and what can be expected from the optimization. By not applying
all requirements in this early stage important knowledge of the problem may be found. For
example which parts that are important or maybe one hole can be moved to improve the
structure?
In an iterative way the requirements and design domain are then gradually defined more
strictly based on resulting topologies and specifications of the final product until a design
which fulfills all specifications and can be realized in a concept is reached. By this way of
iteratively changing the design domain the mesh will be changed leading to knowledge of
the mesh dependence of the problem, which is always important. This approach was used
with good results especially in the trial case of the fixture, Section 4.1.
During this process the authors recommends performing multiple optimizations using
different values of optimization parameters to come up with a set of different topologies
making it possible to chose the best one to use for a concept. This can also be done
automatically, see Chapter 5 for more details and Section 4.6 where this approach was
used on a trial case.
6.1.1
Realization
The concept is to be realized as a CAD model based on the different topologies. This is
a very tricky part which demands knowledge of constructional principles and the present
method for manufacturing. The main approach is to set a certain threshold for the element
densities and export the topology consisting of element densities above that value using
the tool OSSmooth in HyperMesh. The topology can then be imported directly to a CAD
program for a more or less direct translation as discussed in the trial case about the clip,
see Section 4.2.
Fagerstrom and Jansson [1] argue for a standardized method for the realization. According to them the results should always be presented in the same way so the designer
and the structural engineer could improve their skills to interpret the topologies into a
concept. This should be done by always using the same threshold value for the densities
when showing the parts of the structure and exporting it. A threshold value of 0.3 is suggested by Srinivas [24] when designing 2D structures but higher values have shown to be
preferable for most 3D structures. Which threshold value to use in a standardized method
has not been found out. Further, the topologies and their resulting concepts should always
be presented with figures and mechanical properties listed below to make subsequent work
more efficient.
6.2
The concept interpreted from the topology optimization is most often not an optimal structure, it only has the optimal shape but structural units are most likely badly dimensioned.
In the detailed design phase the dimensions of the concept is fine tuned by size and shape
optimization to produce an optimal structure on all levels. The two methods can be performed separately after one another or simultaneously if the sensitivities of the objective
42
function related to the methods are of the same order [22]. This phase may also need to be
performed iteratively if the concept turns out to be far from optimal and hence not possible
to modify completely to the optimum in just one optimization. By experience it is known
that Optistruct may be sensitive of getting distorted element during shape optimization,
see Section 4.4.
Definitive requirements are now used to end up with a structure that in absolute numbers fulfills all specifications. The optimized structure is realized into a final CAD which
is verified in a FE-analysis to ensure that all specifications are still met. The realization
includes adding fillets, etc., to make it manufacturable, such changes may also change the
mechanical properties and the mass.
43
Synthesis
In this chapter different aspects of the work with developing a methodology will be discussed. Also, the used software is evaluated and some recommendations for further work
is given.
7.1
Lessons learned
Many different trial cases, more than initially planned, have been evaluated. This method
of performing optimization on many different types of problems has resulted in insight and
knowledge in how to implement topology and shape optimization in the design process. An
alternative approach could have been to have just one single case and then gone through
the complete design process to the finished product, instead of many different trial cases
in different stages of the design process.
It was found that it is necessary to have a well defined problem before performing
the optimization, the loads and boundary conditions should be at least approximately
known and specified. The optimal structure will normally violate requirements that are
not specified since every new design requirement leads to a reduction of the design space,
unless the requirement is already satisfied. In the trial case of the clip, Section 4.2 a
structure sensitive to buckling is proposed and in the trial case of the strut, Section 4.4
a very thin-walled structure is generated. Producing thin and unstable structures is a
frequently repeated characteristic for optimizations without enough requirements.
When using the eigenvalue as objective or constraint it was found that it was often
necessary to study several eigenmodes at once. If just one eigenmode is considered and
there is an change in the order of the eigenmodes the optimization will suddenly consider a
different eigenmode; this leads to an oscillating problem that may not be possible to solve.
See Section 4.1.
One of the most difficult parts turned out to be interpreting and realizing the resulting
topologies. The result consists of lots of elements with intermediate densities and some
estimate has to be done on which parts and features that are important. It is also difficult
to estimate properties such as strength and mass for the finished product from the design
concept.
Topology optimization should be seen as a tool in the design process that is useful
to generate an efficient design concept that can be used in the early stages of the design
process. The result from the topology optimization is far from a finished product. A
considerable amount of work is required to transform the concept into a finished product.
7.2
Evaluation of software
In this thesis work the HyperWorks software package was used for all FE-calculations and
optimizations giving a lot of time to test end reflect over its capabilities. During the work
with trial cases and study of parameters the software were found out to cover a wide range
of problem solving possibilities in the field of study. However, some specific shortcomings
sometimes seriously affecting the work were also found. Conclusions of the software are
listed below.
Possibility to choose among a large variety of objective functions and optimization
constraints most often makes it possible to set up the optimization in the desired
way
In general very good prospects to define the problem exactly as wished in means of
geometry and mesh, loads, design domains and manufacturability
44
In HyperMesh it is possible to directly apply geometrical changes due to all types of

optimization results for further analysis
The post processor HyperView makes it possible to study and present results in a
good and usable way
The interface of HyperMesh appears rather old and the learning period is quite long
The solution process when applying shape optimization to some cases acts chaotic
and does not converge
Free shape optimization may distort elements leading to interrupted optimization
before convergence is reached
There are problems when optimizing for heat conduction; topology optimization is
not applicable and size optimization of shells gives questionable results. However,
possibility to optimize for heat properties is a completely new feature in Optistruct.
Stress constraints for topology optimization has been found out to be a rather poor
feature which may be misleading to the user.
Using buckling factor as a constraint or objective is not possible for topology and
free-size optimization
The overall opinion is that the software fulfills its purpose as an optimization and
analysis tool and is a good support for any mechanical engineer who uses it.
7.3
Recommendations for further work
As time and effort is limited there are many aspects of this work that can be improved
upon and extended. Some of the more interesting paths to take are
Implement the developed methodology in the design of a new component and evaluate
and draw conclusions. Complete the whole design process to a finished product.
Further study how to interpret/realize the resulting design concept from the topology
optimization and how to estimate the properties (stress, mass, etc.) of the finished
product from the design concept.
Evaluate the resulting solutions with regard to the optimality of the solution. How
to assure that a global optimum is found and what affects this.
An additional study of shape and size optimization in analogy with the parameter
study of topology optimization. Use it to improve the detailed optimization part of
the methodology.
45
References
[1] Martin Fagerstrom and Magnus Jansson. Topology optimization in the design process.
Masters thesis, Chalmers University of Technology, 2002.
[2] Singiresu S. Rao. Engineering Optimization Theory and Practice. John Wiley &
Sons, third edition, 1996.
[3] Matthias Ehrgott. Multicriteria Optimization. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, second
edition, 2005.
[4] Martin Philip Bendse. Optimization of Structural Topology, Shape and Material.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 1995.
[5] Anders Klarbring and Peter W. Christensen. An Introduction to Structural Optimization. Solid Mechanics and its Applications. Springer Science + Business Media B.V.,
2009.
[6] Carlos A. Coello Coello, Gary B. Lamont, and David A. Van Veldhuizen. Evolutionary Algorithms for Solving Multi-Objective Problems. Genetic and Evolutionary
Computation. Springer US, second edition, 2007.
[7] Altair Engineering Inc. Optistruct 10.0 help files, 2009.
[8] Nationalencyklopedin. Topologi. http://www.ne.se.proxy.lib.chalmers.se/
lang/topologi. [Online; accessed 2-March-2010].
[9] Niels Ottosen and Hans Petersson. Introduction to the Finite Element Method. Prentice Hall, 1992.
[10] G. I. N. Rozvany. Aims, scope, methods, history and unified terminology of computeraided topology optimization in structural mechanics. Struct. Multidisc. Optim., 21:90
108, 2000.
[11] G. I. N. Rozvany. A critical review of established methods of structural topology
optimization. Struct. Multidisc. Optim., 37:217237, 2009.
[12] Hans A. Eschenauer and Niels Olhoff. Topology optimization of continuum structures:
A review. Appl. Mech. Rev., 54(4):331390, 2001.
[13] Martin Philip Bendse and O. Sigmund. Material interpolation schemes in topology
optimization. Archive of Applied Mechanics, 69:635654, 1999.
[14] Z. Hashin and S. Shtrikman. A variational approach to the theory of the elastic
behavious of multiphase materials. J. Mech. Phys. Solidss, 11:127140, 1963.
[15] Martin Philip Bendse and Noboru Kikuchi. Generating optimal topologies in structural design using a homogenization method. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics
and Engineering, 71:197224, 1988.
[16] O. Sigmund and J. Petersson. Numerical instabilities in topology optimization: A
survery on procedures dealing with checkerboards, mesh-dependencies and local minima. Structural Optimization, 16:6875, 1998.
[17] M. Zhou, Y. K. Shyy, and H. L. Thomas. Checkerboard and minimum member size
control in topology optimization. Struct. Multidisc. Optim., 21:152158, 2001.
46
[18] FE Design. Fe-design gmbh - cae-dienstleistungen und software zur strukturoptimierung: .topology. http://www.fe-design.de/en/toscatopology.html, 2007.
[19] MSC Software. Design optimization. http://www.mscsoftware.com/Solutions/
Applications/Design-Optimization.aspx.
[20] H. Thomas, M. Zhou, and U. Schramm. Issues of commercial optimization software
development. Struct. Multidisc. Optim., 23:97110, 2002.
[21] Luo Z. Yang J. and Chen L. A new procedure for aerodynamic missile designs using
topological optimization approach of continuum structures. Aerospace Science and
Technology, 10:364373, 2006.
[22] J.K. Shin, K.H. Lee, S.I. Song, and G.J. Park. Automotive door design with the ulsab
concept using structural optimization. Struct Multidisc Optim, 23:320327, 2002.
[23] L. Krog, A. Tucker, and G. Rollema. Application of topology, sizing and shape optimization methods to optimal design of aircraft components. Airbus UK Ltd, Altair
Engineering Ltd, 2002.
[24] A.R. Srinivas. Robust design and realization of spacecraft payload elements using
optistruct as an optimization tool. Space Application Centre ISRO, 2008.
47
Script
The program is written in Python and consists of two parts, parameter 2.py and run param.py.
Settings and paths are set in run param.py which in turn executes the main program
parameter 2.py. run param.py is modified for each parameter study and resides in the
same directory as the .fem-file. Python is a general-purpose high-level programming language; the interpreter required to run the program and more information can be found at
http://www.python.org/.
run param.py
# c o d i n g : cp1252
t e s t r u n = True # I f t r u e . fem f i l e s w i l l be c r e a t e d b u t O p t i s t r u c t i s n o t run
n o n i n t e r a c t i v e = F a l s e # Run w i t h o u t any u s e r i n t e r a c t i o n
o p t i s t r u c t = C: / A l t a i r /hw10 . 0 / h w s o l v e r s / b i n / win32 / o p t i s t r u c t . bat
param2 = C: \ Documents and S e t t i n g s \ U000232 \ Desktop \My Dropbox \ e x j o b b \ s c r i p t \ p a r a m e t e r 2 .
py
o p t i o n s = cpu 2 c o r e i n # f l a g s f o r O p t i s t r u c t
r u n t y p e = s e t s # s e t s , f i l e s or c o m b i n a t i o n s
# s e t s
one s e t o f v a l u e s a t a time , t h e number o f v a l u e s must be t h e same
#
for everykey
# c o m b i n a t i o n s e v e r y c o m b i n a t i o n o f parameter v a l u e s
# f i l e s j u s t run o p t i s t r u c t f o r each f i l e i n t h e l i s t
o r i g f i l e n a m e = klamma #. fem , a l i s t o f f i l e s i f r u n t y p e = f i l e s
# p a r a m s e t s = [ [ key , f i e l d , l i s t o f v a l u e s , name ] ] , i g n o r e d i f r u n t y p e i s f i l e s
p a r a m s e t s = [ [ DCONSTR
1 , 5 , [0.3 ,0.5 ,0.7] , volfrac ] ,
[ +
MEMBSIZ , 3 , [ 1 2 , 1 5 , 2 0 , 2 5 ] , mindim ] ]
# Exempel
#
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
| < f i e l d
#
| lower
|
upper |
#DCONSTR |
1|
3|
|0.3
|
#DOPTPRM | DISCRETE | 3 . 0
|
d e l e t e f i l e s = [ . hgdata , . h i s t , .HM. comp . cmf , .HM. e n t . cmf , . html , .mvw , \
. o s s , . r e s , . sh , . s t a t , f r a m e s . html , h i s t .mvw , \
menu . html ]
e x e c f i l e ( param2 )
parameter 2.py
This is the main program:
#
print
print
print
c o d i n g : cp1252
###########################################
Parameter
###########################################
from s u b p r o c e s s import c a l l
from d a t e t i m e import d a t e t i m e
import o s
import s y s
def p r i n t r e s ( l i n e ) : # p r i n t a s t r i n g t o t h e s c r e e n and l a t e r s a v e i t t o out f i l e
i f l e n ( l i n e ) > 0 and l i n e [ 1 ] == \n :
r e s u l t s . append ( l i n e )
else :
r e s u l t s . append ( l i n e + \n )
print l i n e
try :
noninteractive
except NameError :
noninteractive = 0
try :
test run
except NameError :
test run = 0
48
try :
replace with string
except NameError :
replace with string = 0
# wait for user input
def w a i t ( ) :
i f not n o n i n t e r a c t i v e :
r a w i n p u t ( P r e s s Enter . . . )
# f i n d and modify a l i n e
def change param ( l i n e s , key , f i e l d , v a l u e ) :
found = 0
f o r l i n e in l i n e s : # Go t h r o u g h e v e r y l i n e o f t h e . fem f i l e
i f key in l i n e :
found += 1
# swap t h e v a l u e
if replace with string :
n e w l i n e = l i n e [ 0 : ( ( f i e l d 1) 8 ) ] + %8s % v a l u e [ 0 : 8 ] + l i n e [ ( ( f i e l d ) 8 ) : ]
else :
n e w l i n e = l i n e [ 0 : ( ( f i e l d 1) 8 ) ] + %8.3 g % v a l u e + l i n e [ ( ( f i e l d ) 8 ) : ]
l i n e s [ l i n e s . index ( l i n e ) ] = new line
print m o d i f i e d l i n e t o : + n e w l i n e [ : 1 ]
i f found != 1 :
p r i n t r e s ( Warning , found %d i n s t a n c e s o f %s % ( found , key ) )
if test run :
wait ( )
def r u n o p t i s t r u c t ( ) :
p r i n t r e s ( name : + n e w f i l e n a m e )
printres ( )
i f not t e s t r u n :
try :
o s . remove ( n e w f i l e n a m e + . out )
except WindowsError a s ( e r r n o , s t r e r r o r ) :
pass
code = c a l l ( o p t i s t r u c t + + n e w f i l e n a m e + . fem + o p t i o n s , s h e l l=True )
p r i n t r e s ( e x i t c o d e : + s t r ( code ) )
e l s e : # i s t e s t run
try :
o r i g i n a l = open ( n e w f i l e n a m e + . fem ) . r e a d l i n e s ( )
except IOError a s ( e r r n o , s t r e r r o r ) :
p r i n t r e s ( E r r o r : + s t r e r r o r + ( + n e w f i l e n a m e + . fem ) )
# Delete f i l e s
f o r e x t in d e l e t e f i l e s :
try :
o s . remove ( n e w f i l e n a m e + e x t )
except WindowsError a s ( e r r n o , s t r e r r o r ) :
pass
# Read some d a t a from . out f i l e
try :
o u t d a t a = open ( n e w f i l e n a m e + . out ) . r e a d l i n e s ( )
print E r r o r : + s t r e r r o r + ( + n e w f i l e n a m e + . out )
outdata = [ ]
e r r o r = True
f o r l i n e in r e v e r s e d ( o u t d a t a ) :
i f ITERATION in l i n e :
printres ( line )
break
e l i f ITERATIONS in l i n e :
printres ( line )
break
e l i f O b j e c t i v e F u n c t i o n in l i n e :
printres ( line )
e l i f ELAPSED TIME in l i n e :
printres ( line )
e l i f Maximum C o n s t r a i n t in l i n e :
printres ( line )
e l i f e r r o r and ERROR in l i n e :
error = False
f o r l i n e in o u t d a t a [ o u t d a t a . i n d e x ( l i n e ) : ] :
printres ( line [: 1])
e l i f Sum o f Weight Compliance in l i n e :
radnr = outdata . index ( l i n e )
f o r l i n e in o u t d a t a [ radnr 4: r a d n r + 1 ] :
printres ( line )
# r u n o p t i s t r u c t ( ) ends h e r e
###
Main program s t a r t s h e r e
###
49
results = []
s t a r t t i m e = d a t e t i m e . now ( )
exitcodes = [ ]
done = F a l s e
i f c o m b i n a t i o n s in r u n t y p e :
c u r r e n t s e t = [ 0 ] len ( param sets )
e l i f s e t s in r u n t y p e :
current set = 0
e l i f f i l e s in r u n t y p e :
i f t y p e ( o r i g f i l e n a m e ) != t y p e ( l i s t ( ) ) :
p r i n t r e s ( Error : l i s t of filenames required )
wait ( )
sys . exit ()
else :
p r i n t r e s ( E r r o r : r u n t y p e= + r u n t y p e + ? )
wait ( )
sys . exit ()
i f f i l e s in r u n t y p e :
f o r f i l e n a m e in o r i g f i l e n a m e :
p r i n t r e s ( )
new filename = filename
run optistruct ()
else :
# Load . fem f i l e i n t o a l i s t
try :
o r i g i n a l = open ( o r i g f i l e n a m e + . fem ) . r e a d l i n e s ( )
print E r r o r : + s t r e r r o r
wait ( )
sys . exit ()
while not done : # Do f o r e v e r y parameter c o m b i n a t i o n
new filename = o r i g f i l e n a m e
mod = o r i g i n a l [ : ] # copy l i s t
p r i n t r e s ( )
f o r param in p a r a m s e t s :
i f s e t s in r u n t y p e :
current = current set
else :
c u r r e n t = c u r r e n t s e t [ p a r a m s e t s . i n d e x ( param ) ]
v a l u e = param [ 2 ] [ c u r r e n t ]
f i e l d = param [ 1 ]
key = param [ 0 ]
name = param [ 3 ]
p r i n t r e s ( name + + s t r ( v a l u e ) )
change param (mod , key , f i e l d , v a l u e )
if replace with string :
n e w f i l e n a m e += %s%3s % ( name , v a l u e [ 3 : ] )
else :
n e w f i l e n a m e += %s %.3g % ( name , v a l u e )
f = open ( n e w f i l e n a m e + . fem , w )
f . w r i t e l i n e s (mod)
f . close ()
run optistruct ()
# next s e t / combination
i f c o m b i n a t i o n s in r u n t y p e :
i = 0
while True :
c u r r e n t s e t [ i ] += 1
i f c u r r e n t s e t [ i ] == l e n ( p a r a m s e t s [ i ] [ 2 ] ) :
current set [ i ] = 0
i += 1
i f i == l e n ( p a r a m s e t s ) :
done = True
break
else :
break
e l i f s e t s in r u n t y p e :
i = 0
c u r r e n t s e t += 1
i f c u r r e n t s e t == l e n ( p a r a m s e t s [ 0 ] [ 2 ] ) :
done = True
print
r u n t i m e = d a t e t i m e . now ( ) s t a r t t i m e
r e s u l t s . i n s e r t ( 0 , ###########################################\n )
r e s u l t s . i ns er t (1 ,
R e s u l t s \n )
50
r e s u l t s . i n s e r t ( 2 , ###########################################\n )
r e s u l t s . i n s e r t ( 3 , \n )
r e s u l t s . i n s e r t ( 4 , F i n i s h e d a t + s t r ( d a t e t i m e . now ( ) ) + \n )
r e s u l t s . i n s e r t ( 5 , Run time : + s t r ( r u n t i m e ) + \n\n )
# Write r e s u l t s t o f i l e
f = open ( p a r a m e t e r o u t p u t + d a t e t i m e . now ( ) . s t r f t i m e ( %b%d%H%M ) + . t x t , w )
f . writelines ( results )
f . close ()
# Print r e s u l t s to screen
f o r l i n e in r e s u l t s :
print l i n e ,
sys . stdout . f l u s h ()
wait ( )
51
Methodology
Here the more detailed methodology that is to be used as an aid when using structural
optimization in the design process is presented.
Methodology
Here is a simplified overview of the traditional design process and where the different
types of structural optimizations can be applied. There are basically two different
areas where structural optimization should be performed; in the early design phase
where topology optimization is used to generate a good concept and in the detailed
design phase where size- and shape-optimization is used to further improve the
structure.
The optimization methodology can be applied to a variety of mechanical problems
including solid structures, shell structures and truss structures. Problems were it
should be used with caution due to small outlooks to improvement and good results
are:
- For substructures that in means of mass and stiffness have small impact on the
whole structure. The changes in properties due to chances of the substructure
must be measurable in order to get a working optimization.
- For structures with obscure load cases and requirements. Optimization designs
the structure for the specified problem only which means that specifications
must be known to some extent.
More details on the Concept generation and the Detailed optimization are presented in
subsequent sections.
Experience and
knowledge, similar
constructions
Requirements
Design
Improvements
Concept generation
CAD-model
Detail and FEanalysis
size- and shape-optimization
FE-analysis
verification
52
One important principle that applies to both concept generation and detailed
optimization is that many different optimizations should be performed. It is not
possible give guidelines that will yield a good result in just one optimization. Instead
multiple optimizations must be performed and then evaluated to possibly refine the
problem in an iterative way to get the best result.
In the beginning the requirements and specifications should be as relaxed as possible
to not constrain the optimization too much and risk missing possible easy design
improvements.
Requirements,
problem formulation
Set up optimizations
Opt 1
Opt 2
Opt n
Refine
problem
Evaluate results
Optimization finished
53
Concept generation
A flow chart for the concept generation is presented followed by a deeper description
of each step. Chose of parameters and other details are discussed in the respective
sections. The process of concept generation should be seen as an iterative process
where the problem formulation and design domain is incrementally improved until the
best possible solution is found.
Requirements on geometrical interface, loads,

mechanical responses, manufacturability etc. are
specified.
A design domain is generated from geometrical

requirements. This step may have to be redone.
The design is discretized. Loads and constraints

are specified. Design domain, optimization
parameters, objective function and optimization
constraints are specified. Topology and/ or free
size optimization is run.
The topologies are analyzed to see if it fulfills

the requirements and if it is possible to realize in
a concept.
Requirements and
problem description
Design domain
Setup and run

optimizations
No
Requirements
fulfilled?
Yes
A topology is chosen and a concept is

interpreted from it.
54
Realize concept
Requirements and problem description

In this introducing step all requirements for the final product are presented and
translated to numerical requirements that can be introduced in the optimization work.
Load cases, constraints and modeling aspects are also defined. The objective of the
work is presented, e.g. minimization of mass or maximization of eigenfrequencies.
Geometrical requirements
The geometrical interface is specified in terms of
Largest allowed design
volume
Predefined parts
Parts that must be present
Define the largest allowed domain (volume or area) in

which the final structure must be formed.
Define position and shape of parts that must not be
changed by the optimization. E.g. contact surfaces,
connections to other structures etc.
Define what parts that must be present in the final
structure but can be placed according to the
optimization. E.g. Screw holes, holes for cables,
connections to other structures etc.
Symmetry or the like
Is there any type of symmetry or pattern repetition that is

desired?
Accessibility for mounting What points of the structure must be accessible for
mounting or other requirements. They have to be defined
so that voids can be placed at those positions in the
design domain.
Load cases and constraints

Define loads and constraints for the structure.
Static loads
Define magnitude, direction and position for forces as
well as the corresponding constraints. The right relation
between the loads is more important than the absolute
magnitudes. The structure may be arbitrarily bad for
load cases that are not introduced.
Acceleration loads
Gravitational loads can simulate acceleration or shake
tests.
If the structure that is to be optimized is a part of a larger structure and forces may
take other ways than through the structure being optimized, the results will most
probably be rather poor. Instead insert static forces on the structure alone.
Mechanical requirements
Define requirements on masses and mechanical responses.
Mass
Define the largest/smallest allowed mass of the final
structure.
Stress
Define the largest allowed stresses of the final structure,
any safety limit?
Displacement
Define the largest/smallest allowed displacement at
different parts of the structure if necessary.
55
Manufacturability requirements
What method will be used for manufacturing? What are the thinnest/thickest allowed
material thicknesses?
Extrusion
Casting
Material thickness
What direction?
Single or split? Directions?
Minimum and maximum member size?
Objective, criterion of success

Define the objective of the conceptual design and what type of result that shall be
considered as a success.
Design domain
The design domain is created, preferably by a designer and an analysis engineer in
cooperation. The idea is to start with a simple domain leaving much for the
optimization to do and successively refine it after optimizations. In this way the
chances to reach a global optimum are increased and the concept will be more
optimal. The design domain is preferably made as a CAD-model.
Set up the design domain using the following tips
First design domain
Construct a design domain using the geometrical
requirements. Design the predefined parts, fill up the
largest allowed design volume and introduce voids for
mounting etc at predefined positions if any.
Refined domain
After initial optimizations parts that must be present in
the final structure but dont have predefined positions
are introduced. Use conclusions from the optimizations
to choose the best positions. Construct additional voids
for mounting.
Partition the design

domain
If some part of the design domain obviously is

unnecessary it could be removed to make computations
faster.
The design domain may be partitioned and parts can be
left out of the calculations. E.g. if a structure is to be
placed on a plate which is to be fastened in something;
the plate can be excluded and the structure supposed to
be fixed in the former contact surface to the plate. See
Section 4.1 about the fixture.
The plate is then introduced later when the other parts of
the structure are ready.
This method is used when it is hard to fulfill
manufacturability constraints.
56
Set up and run optimizations

Discretize the model and define load cases
Mesh the model with an element size of a third of the desired minimum member size.
This will ensure a mesh independent solution later on. Complete the model and
connect it to possible adjacent structures.
Define the loads, constraints and load cases the structure shall be subjected to.
When the design domain has been refined and shall be optimized again the mesh size
can be slightly shifted to study if the analysis is mesh independent.
When the model is finished a test run is performed to study if
- there is a possibility to reach a successful result with the optimization; that the
requirements are not unreasonable
- the model is built up properly; that elements are connected correctly etc., a
modal analysis is good to spot errors
Topology or free size optimization?

Topology optimization is used for solid structures and for shell structures where a
truss like result is wanted. Free-size optimization is used for shell structures where the
thickness is to be optimized and gives a more smooth distribution of material than
topology optimization. In general free-size optimization gives more optimal results
than topology optimization but the realization of the structure may be more difficult.
Design domain and design variables

The definition of the design domain, design variables and manufacturing constraints
are described in the following table.
Properties
Design variables
Extrusion (topology)
Casting (topology)
Minimum member size
Create properties and assign elements of the model to

properties that define design domain and non-design
domain.
The designable area could be partitioned into a number
of separate design domains possibly giving more control
in the means of material distribution, manufacturability
etc.
Create design variables by choosing property and then
defining manufacturability constraints.
The optimization will act by a constant cross section.
Direction is chosen.
By choosing draw direction the final structure
theoretically will be possible to construct by casting. No
internal cavities will be formed.
If the product is to be casted from many directions the
design domain is divided into a number of sub domains,
each one with its own draw direction.
The smallest allowed member size is specified. The
element size should be roughly a third of this size.
57
Other parameters
Symmetry and pattern

repetition
Limitations
There are other parameters available when creating the

design variables; maximum member size, max stress and
fatigue. These should be used with caution.
When defining the design variables, demands on
different kinds of symmetry and pattern repetitions can
be activated. Use this in accordance with the geometrical
requirements.
Manufacturability constraints and symmetry/pattern
repetition constraints cannot be use simultaneously.
Parameters
A number of parameters that influence the optimization result can be activated and
varied to achieve better results. The parameters and their effects are described below.
MINDIM
Controls the minimum member size, very effective at
suppressing checkerboard patterns and enforce a discrete
solution. Should be at least 3 times the element size.
DISCRETE
Controls the penalization of intermediate densities, a
value of 2 is recommended for 2D-elements and 3 for
3D-elements
CHECKER
Suppresses checkerboard patterns, results in a lot of
intermediate densities, consider the use of MINDIM
instead
MATINIT
The initial material distribution
OBJTOL
The convergence criteria. Default is 0.005, lower leads
to more iterations. Is most often OK with the default
value.
DESMAX
Maximum number of iterations. Default is 30 (80 when
MINDIM is used). Default is most often sufficient; if
max number of iterations is reached and the solution
appears to converge, DESMAX should be increased.
SCREEN
A control card that should be used to output information
about the iterations to the command window
Responses
A number of different responses that can be used both as objective function and
constraint are available and can be seen below
Compliance
Weighted compliance
Volume
Mass
Eigenfrequency
58
Typical as objective function, inverse of the stiffness of

the structure
Weighted sum of compliances from different load cases
The frequency of one particular eigenmode, note that if

the eigenmode number changes order with another
eigenmode this will result in an oscillating optimization
problem and a bad result. If so weighted eigenfequencies
Weighted
eigenfrequencies
Static displacement
must be used.
Weighted sum of the reciprocal eigenfrequencies, at
most 6 modes. Trial and error might be needed to set
weights and find a value which produces eigenvalues in
the desired range
Displacement in one node, in one direction or the total
distance. If the acting force is applied in the measured
node, minimization of displacement is very similar to
minimization of compliance.
User defined function

Responses that are not available for topology optimization includes buckling factor
and temperature.
Objective
The objective function is defined by choosing a response to either maximize or
minimize. Exactly one objective function must be created.
Constraints
Constrains are defined by setting upper and/or lower bounds on a response. Multiple
constraints can be created.
Instead of using the available stress constraint it is recommended to perform multiple
optimizations with the objective of minimizing the compliance together with different
upper bounds on the volume fraction. From this the stresses for each volume fraction
is studied manually and a volume fraction that gives reasonable stresses is chosen.
59
Automated study
To easily test different combinations of optimization parameters and constraint it is
very suitable to perform an automated study where several optimizations with
different parameters are performed. By automating this study time can be saved by
doing multiple optimizations in off-work hours and by eliminating the required work
to change parameters. The solutions can then be analyzed and the best one is chosen
for further work.
MINDIM
DISCRETE
MATINIT
volume fraction, mass

fraction, volume or mass
Load cases
Vary in a range around the specified minimum member

size for the final structure.
Vary the value to study if a result which is more clear
and easy to realize is possible to reach.
Vary to study if the optimization converges to the same
structure. This gives information of whether a global
optimum is reached or not.
If one of the responses volume fraction, mass fraction,
volume or mass is used as a constraint: vary the value in
a wide range. Plot the resulting values of the objective
function to the constraint value. This gives information
of the relation between decreased mass contra loss of
goodness of the structure and vice versa.
If weighted compliance is used as objective or
optimization constraint the individual weights are varied
to study the robustness of the solution. Direction and
position of loads and constraints can be varied. The
topology can be subjected to load cases which it is not
optimized for and the robustness studied.
Criterion of success
The properties of the resulting topologies are hard to measure in absolute numbers.
The mass and other properties of the final structure will most probably differ from
those of the structure at this stage. Therefore a limit of safety should be used on
eigenfrequencies, displacements, etc. Topology optimization will most likely give a
structure with high stresses; however, such matters are designed for in the detailed
design phase. A structure that is considered as a candidate to continue with should
fulfill the following requirements:
- Any demands on eigenfrequencies or displacement etc. are fulfilled with a
limit of safety
- The topology should be able to realize in a concept without any drastic
changes in topology
- The topology has been proven to be a global optimum
- The topology has shown to be robust by using variation of load cases
- The overall behavior and shape of the topology seems reasonable
60
Realize concept
One of the most difficult tasks when performing the topology optimization is to
interpret the results. By setting up the optimization problem in a good way this step
can be made easier but it is still far from unambiguous.
The designer and the analysis engineer should at this stage work together so that
aspects such as manufacturing are taken into account and sound simplifications are
made.
The results are post processed in HyperView. One good way to visualize the result is
by only showing the elements that have a density above a certain threshold. The
threshold is varied to get a good understanding of the result.
The post processing capabilities of HyperMesh, OSSmooth, can be used to generate
an IGES-model from the results than can be opened in a CAD-software to be used as
a guideline. OSSmooth also requires a threshold density when producing the model.
61
In this stage a CAD-model of the structure is available that is similar and have the
same topology as the end result. The objective in this stage is to fine-tune, or refine,
the structure to make it as good as possible.
There are basically two different types of detailed optimization: size optimization and
shape optimization. Shape optimization can also be performed by free-shape
optimization. This should be an iterative process where several subsequent
optimizations are performed to get the best possible result.
Requirements on geometrical interface, mechanical

responses, manufacturability, etc., are specified.
Requirements and
problem description
The optimization problem is set up; can be a

combination of size, shape and free-shape
optimization.
Setup and run

optimizations
Evaluate if the requirements are fulfilled and ensure

that a global optimum has been found
Requirements
fulfilled?
No
Yes
The results are interpreted and implemented in the
real structure
Interpretation of results
Requirements and problem description

The requirements and objective on the design is specified by creating an objective
function and setting constraints by using a combination of available responses.
Multiple optimizations with varying parameters and options should be performed to
get a feeling of the problem and to find the best possible solution. Constraints and
requirements can in the beginning be relaxed to not limit the design space too much.
The specifications are then refined to get the desired end result.
62
Available responses
A table of the available responses that can be used as objective function or as
constraints in size or shape optimization can be seen below. It can be noted that in this
detailed optimization buckling factor and stress can also be used as responses.
Compliance
Typical as objective function, inverse of the stiffness of
the structure
Weighted compliance
Weighted sum of compliances from different load cases
Volume
Mass
Eigenfrequency
The frequency of one particular eigenmode, note that if
the eigenmode number change place with another
eigenmode, i.e. an order change, this will result in an
oscillating optimization problem and a bad result. If so
weighted eigenfequencies must be used.
Weighted
Weighted sum of the reciprocal eigenfrequencies, at
eigenfrequencies
most 6 modes. Trial and error might be needed to set
weights and find a value which makes the eigenvalues
in the desired range.
Von Mises stress
Static displacement
Displacement in one node, in one direction or the total
distance
Temperature
In the evaluated trial case optimization with temperature
as a response did not yield a good result
Buckling factor
The buckling factor of a given mode
User defined function
Setup and run optimization

In the detailed optimization there are three types of structural optimization available
when using Optistruct; size, shape and free-shape optimization.
Size optimization
In size optimization the design variables are first created. Then almost any type of
parameter that can be specified by a numerical value such as shell thickness, beam
width/height, etc., can be set to depend on the created design variables. It is also
possible to let some property depend on a linear combination of design variables.
Requirements on design variables
Boundaries
If necessary, specify lower and upper bounds on the
design variables
Discrete
The design variable can be specified to take values from
a given set of discrete values. For example if it is
desired to find the best steel sheet thickness only a
couple of thicknesses are available
Start value
The start value of the variables can be chosen and a
number of optimizations with varied start values are
highly recommended since different results may occur
63
Shape optimization
Shape optimization is performed by first creating different shapes using the tool
HyperMorph in HyperMesh. Then design variables are created from these shape
changes together with limits on how big the allowed shape changes are (as a
multiplication factor of the shape change).
Shape changes can be created in many different ways. It is possible to create shape
changes that controls length, radius of fillets, diameters of holes, etc., of parts of the
FE-model. The range in which the change may vary can be specified to for example
restrict the change in an area due to space limitations.
Free-shape optimization
Free-shape optimization is performed by specifying nodes on the boundary that are
allowed to be moved to fine-tune the structure. Nodes can also be specified to be fixed
if the node must not move due to geometric requirements.
It has been noted that Optistruct may be sensitive of getting distorted elements when
performing free-shape optimization, see Section 4.4: Trial case: strut for airborne
radar. If this happens the program will simply crash. One way to prevent this is by
making the finite element mesh more similar to the final shape. This can be done by
looking at the shape change of the last iteration step before the program crashes and
making a new mesh that is more similar to the end result.
Design constraints
Manufacturing
requirements
Geometric requirements
Nodal movement
If necessary set an extrusion or draw direction constraint

on the design. Both cannot be used simultaneously.
Set nodes that must not be moved to be fixed. Define if
the boundary is allowed to grow and/or shrink and by
how much.
Decide how the boundary nodes should be allowed to
move; free, along a vector or on a plane
Note that when defining the design variables the choice of smoothening method
should be at default, optimized for speed. Otherwise an error in the program may
occur, the producers of Optistruct are aware of the problem.
Interpretation of results
Interpreting the result from the shape or size optimization is a simple task compared
to the interpretation in the concept generation case. The boundaries are well defined
and numerical values on aspects such as mass, stresses, displacements, etc., are
readily available. However, one has to be aware of that angles and dimensions may
have changed so that geometrical requirements are not exactly fulfilled in the detail
optimized structure.
64

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Methodology for Topology and Shape

Optimization in the Design Process

MASTERS THESIS 2010:11

Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design

Department of Applied Mechanics

Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design Process

Masters Thesis 2010:11

Methodology for Topology and Shape Optimization in the Design Process

Keywords: topology optimization, shape optimization, SIMP, Optistruct, methodology

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Aim and loading conditions . . . . .

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Goteborg June 2010

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Scope and limitations

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

One method of solving the multicriteria optimization problem is by scalarization, i.e., by

where f1 , . . . , fk are the objective functions

By varying the weights wk , different Pareto optimal solutions may be found.

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

(a) Sizing optimization

(b) Shape optimization

(c) Topology optimization

Figure 2.1: Different types of structural optimization

Perturbation vector approach

n = number of shapes/design variables

with limits on weights wimin wi wimax

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

min C() = F T u()

Where = [1 , . . . , n ]T is the design vector consisting of the element densities and a =

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Overview of Used Tools

Figure 3.1: An overview of the workflow in Hyperworks

Optistruct is capable of performing a range of different finite element analyses including

A discretized FE model will always be needed when performing an optimization with

Table 3.1: Common responses used as objective or constraint

can be calculated from the whole model or

average density, only applicable for topology

Responses from load cases

is calculated from one or more static load

A key difference when performing a topology optimization versus a shape optimization

Optimization objective constraints

Stress constraints can be applied to topology optimization in a special way

The second method is the free-shape approach. With free-shape optimization it is

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Trial case: Fixture

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

where n is the number of eigenfrequencies to be accounted for, the maximum number

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Trial case: Clip

Figure 4.3: Original design of clip

Figure 4.4: Drawing of boundary conditions

The optimization problem was formulated in Optistruct as:

, Applied Mechanics, Masters Thesis 2010:11

Figure 4.8: Stresses of the shape optimized clip