Compliant Mechanism Synthesis Using Nonlinear Elastic Topology Optimization with Variable Boundary Conditions

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Alacoque, Lee R., Bhattacharyya, Anurag, James, Kai A.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Alacoque, Lee R.
Bhattacharyya, Anurag
James, Kai A.
author_facet Alacoque, Lee R.
Bhattacharyya, Anurag
James, Kai A.
contents In topology optimization of compliant mechanisms, the specific placement of boundary conditions strongly affects the resulting material distribution and performance of the design. At the same time, the most effective locations of the loads and supports are often difficult to find manually. This substantially limits topology optimization's effectiveness for many mechanism design problems. We remove this limitation by developing a method which automatically determines optimal positioning of a prescribed input displacement and a set of supports simultaneously with an optimal material layout. Using nonlinear elastic physics, we synthesize a variety of compliant mechanisms with large output displacements, snap-through responses, and prescribed output paths, producing designs with significantly improved performance in every case tested. Compared to optimal designs generated using best-guess boundary conditions used in previous studies, the mechanisms presented in this paper see performance increases ranging from 47%-380%. The results show that nonlinear mechanism responses may be particularly sensitive to boundary condition locations and that effective placements can be difficult to find without an automated method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2308_10858
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Compliant Mechanism Synthesis Using Nonlinear Elastic Topology Optimization with Variable Boundary Conditions
Alacoque, Lee R.
Bhattacharyya, Anurag
James, Kai A.
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
In topology optimization of compliant mechanisms, the specific placement of boundary conditions strongly affects the resulting material distribution and performance of the design. At the same time, the most effective locations of the loads and supports are often difficult to find manually. This substantially limits topology optimization's effectiveness for many mechanism design problems. We remove this limitation by developing a method which automatically determines optimal positioning of a prescribed input displacement and a set of supports simultaneously with an optimal material layout. Using nonlinear elastic physics, we synthesize a variety of compliant mechanisms with large output displacements, snap-through responses, and prescribed output paths, producing designs with significantly improved performance in every case tested. Compared to optimal designs generated using best-guess boundary conditions used in previous studies, the mechanisms presented in this paper see performance increases ranging from 47%-380%. The results show that nonlinear mechanism responses may be particularly sensitive to boundary condition locations and that effective placements can be difficult to find without an automated method.
title Compliant Mechanism Synthesis Using Nonlinear Elastic Topology Optimization with Variable Boundary Conditions
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.10858