TopShape

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TopShape represents a further development of the SKO process with the aim of improving and facilitating the optimization of cast parts . The reason for this lies in the fact that the underlying biological growth rule has no manufacturing restrictions and the results therefore tend to be hollow and lattice-like structures. However, such structures are usually undesirable, especially in the case of cast parts, and usually cannot be implemented in terms of casting without major deviations from the design proposal. In order to improve the situation, a design proposal must therefore be calculated that takes manufacturing restrictions into account. This idea has been implemented at TopShape by not only simulating the growth rule, but also taking the following restrictions into account:

  1. As with SKO, you start with the design space, but apply the growth rule as with the CAO method only to the surface and thus prevent the creation of holes within the structure.
  2. The user can define a minimum wall thickness that must not be fallen below.
  3. A unidirectional or bidirectional demolding direction can be defined so that no undercuts can arise.

application

Fig. 1: Comparison of the results of a topology optimization with SKO (without cast part restrictions) and TopShape (with cast part restrictions) for a steering knuckle
Fig. 2: Implementation of the TopShape design proposal

In Fig. 1 and 2, the optimization of a steering knuckle with SKO and TopShape is compared. This clearly shows how strongly the manufacturing restrictions influence the design proposal. While pure topology optimization (SKO) provides a typical truss structure that is difficult to interpret and can only be implemented with major deviations, the TopShape result can be used almost directly.

literature

  • L. Harzheim, G. Graf: TopShape: An Attempt to Create Design Proposals Including Manufacturing Constraints. Proceedings of the 3rd Optimization software, Methods and Applications Conference OptiCON2000, October 26-27, 2000, New Port Beach, CA.
  • L. Harzheim, G. Graf: A Review of Optimization of Cast Parts Using Topology Optimization: II - Topology Optimization with Manufacturing Constraints. Struct Multdisc Optim 31, 2006, 388-399
  • L. Harzheim: Structure optimization, fundamentals and applications. Scientific publishing house Harri Deutsch GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8171-1809-0