Development of a joint distance constraint for optimized topology and optimized connection for multiple components

Abstract

This article develops a new topology optimization scheme for finding optimized joints for multiple components. As the optimized topologies for each component are determined by several structural conditions, simultaneously optimizing the joint location as well as the optimized topology is regarded as one of the difficult problems. Because joint connections are normally defined at nodes, inevitably the optimized locations of joints are mesh dependent. To contribute to these research topics, this research presents a new method for controlling the optimized location of joints. In particular, a joint dispersal constraint is developed in order to control the number and optimized locations of optimized joints. With the developed scheme, it is possible to find optimized joints as well as optimized topology while maintaining a minimum distance between all joints. To show the effectiveness of the present optimization scheme, several numerical optimization problems are solved.