An Evolutionary Soft-Add Topology Optimization Method for Synthesis of Compliant Mechanisms With Maximum Output Displacement

Abstract

This paper presents an evolutionary soft-add topology optimization method for synthesis of compliant mechanisms. Unlike the traditional hard-kill or soft-kill approaches, a soft-add scheme is proposed in this study where the elements are equivalent to be numerically added into the analysis domain through the proposed approach. The objective function in this study is to maximize the output displacement of the analyzed compliant mechanism. Three numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the optimal topologies of the analyzed compliant mechanisms are in good agreement with previous studies. In addition, the computational time can be greatly reduced by using the proposed soft-add method in the analysis cases. As the target volume fraction in topology optimization for the analyzed compliant mechanism is usually below 30% of the design domain, the traditional methods which remove unnecessary elements from 100% turn into inefficient. The effect of spring stiffness on the optimized topology has also been investigated. It shows that higher stiffness values of the springs can obtain a clearer layout and minimize the one-node hinge problem for two-dimensional cases. The effect of spring stiffness is not significant for the three-dimensional case.