A new coating filter of coated structure for topology optimization

Abstract

The present research develops a new density filter in topology optimization considering the coating structure. The coating structure refers to a uniform thickness structure covering the surface of a substrate structure and it is one of the important manufacturing techniques for the decorative or the functional purpose. In order to find out topological designs with the coating structure, this study develops a new density filter approach by multiplying the modified density design variables and the original design variables. Compared to the other approaches, this density coating filter uses simple averaging or the p-norm of the neighborhood densities to find out the envelope of the substrate, and we propose to multiply the modified densities and the original densities to define the uniformly thick coating layer. By modifying the radius of the envelope, it is possible to modify the thickness of the coating layer. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the present coating filter scheme.