Optimization of mechanical structures under special consideration of materials

Abstract

AbstractStructural and Mechanical Optimization Problems are well distributed and described in literature. A high number of applications from different industry fields are publicated. Due to increasing demands for performance improvement together with reduced weight and costs the specific consideration of material laws and uncertainties into optimization problems in mechanical engineering is required. This paper presents an overview about Stochastic Structural Optimization as far as required to consider specific material laws. The application of structural stochastic optimization with specific material laws is illustrated at different test and industrial examples:• Ten‐Bar System as standard test application with elastic material law and scattering material parameters• Ceramic Mirror with brittle ceramic materials• Powertrain Mounting System with nonlinear rubber material• Large scale Vehicle Body Structure with plastic material. Here the application will be presented and one of the commercial software systems. The details of this example will be publicated in the future. The numerical evaluation of this example is very expensive and time consuming. This is the one reason why stochastic optimization is not well distributed already.The presented examples are results of different projects the authors has worked at in the last 12 years at university and industry. About a decade ago stochastic optimization routines were still programmed in small working groups at universities. To increase the application to different industry branches, commercial software has to be used. There are a number of software packages on the market claiming the capability of stochastic optimization as well. In the next time these packages will be tested at different applications. This will be part of the planned publication in the future. The Vehicle Body Structure example in this paper will outline the task without going into the details. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)