NITO: Neural Implicit Fields for Resolution-free Topology Optimization

TL;DR

NITO introduces a resolution-free, domain-agnostic deep learning framework for topology optimization that outperforms existing methods in efficiency and structural quality, enabling versatile and high-resolution design solutions.

Contribution

NITO is the first to provide a resolution-free, domain-agnostic deep learning approach for topology optimization, featuring a novel boundary condition representation method.

Findings

Synthesizes structures with up to 7x better efficiency

Operates in a tenth of the time compared to SOTA diffusion models

Generalizes across many domains without multiple domain-specific models

Abstract

Topology optimization is a critical task in engineering design, where the goal is to optimally distribute material in a given space for maximum performance. We introduce Neural Implicit Topology Optimization (NITO), a novel approach to accelerate topology optimization problems using deep learning. NITO stands out as one of the first frameworks to offer a resolution-free and domain-agnostic solution in deep learning-based topology optimization. NITO synthesizes structures with up to seven times better structural efficiency compared to SOTA diffusion models and does so in a tenth of the time. In the NITO framework, we introduce a novel method, the Boundary Point Order-Invariant MLP (BPOM), to represent boundary conditions in a sparse and domain-agnostic manner, moving away from expensive simulation-based approaches. Crucially, NITO circumvents the domain and resolution limitations that restrict Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models to a structured domain of fixed size -- limitations that hinder the widespread adoption of CNNs in engineering applications. This generalizability allows a single NITO model to train and generate solutions in countless domains, eliminating the need for numerous domain-specific CNNs and their extensive datasets. Despite its generalizability, NITO outperforms SOTA models even in specialized tasks, is an order of magnitude smaller, and is practically trainable at high resolutions that would be restrictive for CNNs. This combination of versatility, efficiency, and performance underlines NITO's potential to transform the landscape of engineering design optimization problems through implicit fields.