General Shape Optimization of Thin-Walled Structures on Prescribed Surfaces

This paper on "General Shape Optimization of Thin-Walled Structures on Prescribed Surfaces" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on Design, Simulation & Optimisation: Reliability & Applicability of Computational Methods - 9-11 April 1997, Stuttgart, Germany.

Abstract

The design of punched plane and doubly curved shell structures, like bodyworks or containers, is still a challenging task. The quality of the structural design depends strongly on the topology and the shape of the holes. In the present paper methods of structural optimization are applied to solve this design problem. The basic layout is determined by material topology optimization, i.e. holes are inserted or eliminated. The inner and outer contours are optimized in detail by shape optimization. In order to improve the quality of the results and to increase the numerical efficiency of the optimization procedure the design model is adapted during the optimization process, i.e. the discretization of the design model is refined according to the current stage of the optimization process and it is adaptively switched between topology and shape optimization. The overall optimization procedure is presented and the adaptive techniques are discussed. The proposed methods are verified with some examples.