A New Development of a Shadow Density Filter for Manufacturing Constraint and Its Applications to Multiphysics Topology Optimization

Abstract

The present research develops a new shadow filter and presents its usage for structural topology optimization (TO) considering the molding manufacturability. It is important to consider manufacturing methods in designing products. Some geometrical features not allowing molded parts should be removed. In addition, it has been an important issue to efficiently impose these manufacturing constraints in TO. For this purpose, the present research emulates implementation of shadowing of products and applies the shadow images as pseudo-density variables in TO. The use of this shadow density filter ensures that the optimized layouts comply with the conditions of the manufacturing constraints. Various manufacturing conditions can be imposed depending on the direction and the position of the light. Several numerical examples of compliance minimization problem, conjugate heat transfer problem, and fluid–structure interaction problem are solved to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the present shadow density filters, and their performances are compared.