A Novel Derivative Free Methodology for Topology Optimization

Abstract

Most existing methods for topology optimization update the material distribution iteratively based on the derivative information. However, the calculation of gradient is of low accuracy and even unavailable in some cases. To this end, this paper proposes a novel derivative free methodology for TO based on affine transformations and Boolean operations. Specifically, the proposed method selects the basic structures to constitute a new topology. Affine transformations and Boolean operations are employed to represent the evolvement and the way of combinations of the basic structures. The numerical result has validated the proposed method.