Accelerating tri-directional material distribution optimization in functionally graded plates with an adaptive design control point variable selection

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of optimizing tri-directional material distribution in functionally graded (FG) plates under static loads to minimize the compliance is studied. Generalized shear deformation theory (GSDT) in the framework of isogeometric analysis is employed as the analyzer for efficiency and accuracy, and a non-uniform rational B-spline function is used for depicting the material distribution. As the number of control points in fine 3D design meshes, i.e., the number of optimization variables, can be too large for an algorithm to find a practically feasible design, we propose an adaptive variable selection mechanism. It gradually selects control points at important regions as variables by considering neighbor material variance, hence accelerates the optimization process. Various plate geometries are considered to validate the present approach. The findings confirm that the design mesh should be fine, and that the proposed variable selection strategy enables the optimization algorithm to find much more refined designs even in cases of large dimensions while also reducing computation.