A reaction diffusion-based B-spline level set (RDBLS) method for structural topology optimization

Abstract

This work uses the zero-level contour of a parameterized level set function, a linear combination of cubic B-spline basis functions, to express the structural profile in structural topology optimization. Together with mean compliance, diffusion energy is minimized under a volume constraint to control the structural complexity. The design variables, namely the coefficients of cubic B-spline basis functions, are updated by solving the reaction–diffusion equation within a finite element analysis framework. The bisectional algorithm accurately calculates the Lagrangian multiplier of the volume constraint in each iteration. In addition to expressing the optimized structure smoothly, the proposed method is highly efficient. For instance, it only takes 20 iterations to solve the cantilever and MBB beams in 2D. For 3D optimization, we obtain several elegant bridge designs using nearly one million elements, demonstrating the great potential of the proposed method for practical applications.