Multi-scale design of multi-material lattice structures through a CAD-compatible topology optimisation algorithm

Abstract

This work deals with the multi-scale topology optimisation (TO) of multi-material lattice structures. The proposed approach is based on: non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) hyper-surfaces to represent the geometric descriptor related to each material phase composing the representative volume element (RVE), an improved multiphase material interpolation (MMI) scheme to penalise the element stiffness tensor of the multi-material RVE, the strain energy-based homogenisation method (SEHM) to carry out the scale transition. In this context, the design requirements are defined at different scales and their gradient is evaluated by exploiting the properties of the NURBS entities and of the SEHM. Moreover, the improved MMI scheme proposed here does not require the introduction of artificial filtering techniques to smooth the topological descriptors of the material phases composing the RVE. The effectiveness of the method is proven on both 2D and 3D problems. Specifically, a sensitivity analysis of the optimised configuration of the RVE to the parameters tuning the shape of the NURBS entity is conducted. Finally, the influence of the starting point and of the macroscopic loads on the optimal solution is investigated.