Lightweight design for smart precast concrete pavement based on topology optimization method

Abstract

This paper presents a lightweight design method for smart precast concrete pavement based on topology optimization theory. A static smart truck platooning load has been considered in the setting of initial load conditions of optimization procedure, and two boundary conditions including free edges slab and slab edges with dowels are introduced. In order to ensure the performance and to decrease the weight of the pavement structure, the optimization problem is formulated to minimize the strain energy of the whole structure with two constraints including material volume fraction and stress constraint. The topology optimization algorithm is based on level-set method and reaction-diffusion equation, the sensitivity of the objective function is obtained by topology gradient method and the FEM (finite element method) is accomplished by modifying a fixed background mesh. After the design process, the weight of smart concrete pavement structure can be reduced to less than 50%, and the maximum stress is decreased to 80% of traditional structure.