Shell-infill composite structure design based on a hybrid explicit-implicit topology optimization method

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid explicit-implicit topology optimization method for shell-infill composite structures, combining MMC and SIMP techniques to efficiently generate complex infill topologies without complex filtering.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid optimization approach that leverages the strengths of both explicit and implicit methods for shell-infill structure design.

Findings

Successfully optimized complex shell-infill structures

Eliminated need for complex filtering or projection operations

Demonstrated effectiveness through numerical examples

Abstract

The present paper introduces a hybrid explicit-implicit topology optimization method for shell-infill composite structure design. The proposed approach effectively combines the advantages of the explicit Moving Morphable Component (MMC) method, which describes structural topology only using a set of geometric parameters, and the implicit Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) method, which offers greater design freedom for characterizing the structural features. Compared to the existing methods for shell-infill structure design, the proposed approach can obtain optimized shell-infill structures with complex infill topology without resorting to complex filtering/projection operations. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.