EVOLUTIONARY STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION APPLIED FOR PROBLEMS WITH NONLINEAR BEHAVIOR

Debora Francisco Lalo¹; Marcelo Greco¹

¹ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0943

Resumo

Structural optimization has received ever increasing attention in all engineering areas and it has been identified as the most challenging and the most economically rewarding task in the structural design field. As a result of high speed computers and parallel processing, several topology optimization methods have been developed, including the ones that apply heuristic procedures in the analysis and act on an evolutionary manner. In this context, it is presented here a methodology based on the Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) that corresponds to an evolutionary procedure applied for topology optimization in which the finite elements with the lowest stress levels are progressively removed from the structure. The proposed paper presents optimization studies applied for structures subjected to multiple load cases, where through the implemented technique, the nonlinear behavior for both statics and dynamics conditions can be considered in the analysis in order to generate a reliable design by structural optimization. The nonlinear response is extended to elastoplasticity where a von Mises material with linear, isotropic work-hardening for small strains is used. The implementation was accomplished through an algorithm developed in Python programming language, due to its interface with the commercial software Abaqus®. The effectiveness of this new approach by evolutionary procedure optimization will be demonstrated through the comparison with classical examples from literature.

Palavras-chave: Topology Optimization; Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO); Nonlinear Analysis; Multiple Load Cases