Upcoming Events
Large-Scale Topology Optimization
Oct 23, 2020, 10:00 - 11:00 AM
The next CMAI Colloquium will be on
Date: Friday, October 23, 2020 at 10am (Eastern Time)
Speaker: Dr. Boyan S Lazarov
Lawerence Livermore National Lab
Title: Large-Scale Topology Optimization
Zoom Link: Join Zoom Meeting
Abstract: Topology optimization has gained the status of being the preferred optimization tool in the mechanical, automotive, and aerospace industries. It has undergone tremendous development since its introduction in 1988, and nowadays, it has spread to many other disciplines such as Acoustics, Optics, and Material Design. The basic idea is to distribute material in a predefined domain by minimizing a selected objective and fulfilling a set of constraints. The procedure consists of repeated system analyses, gradient evaluation steps by adjoint sensitivity analysis, and design updates based on mathematical programming methods. Regularization techniques ensure the existence of a solution.
The result of the topology optimization procedure is a bitmap image of the design. The ability of the method to modify every pixel/voxel results in design freedom unavailable by any other alternative approach. However, this freedom comes with the requirement of using the computational power of large parallel machines. Incorporating a model accounting for exploitation and manufacturing variations in the optimization process and the high contrast between the material phases increase further the computational cost. Thus, this talk focuses on methods for reducing the computational complexity, ensuring manufacturability of the optimized design and efficient handling of the high contrast of the material properties. The development will be demonstrated in airplane wing design, compliant mechanisms, heat sinks, material microstructures for additive manufacturing, and photonic devices.