Topology optimization in fluid mechanics using continuous adjoint and the cut-cell method

Abstract

A topology optimization method for steady-state flows of incompressible fluids which is capable of imposing accurate boundary conditions along the solid walls of the sought fluid paths is presented. In each topology optimization cycle, body-conforming Cartesian meshes are generated around shapes of any complexity by tracing the fluid-solid interfaces and a cut-cell flow solver is implemented together with its adjoint. Sensitivity derivatives are computed along the fluid-solid interfaces via the continuous adjoint method. Changes in topology are caused by expressing the computed sensitivity derivatives w.r.t. an auxiliary background material distribution, that helps updating the fluid-solid interfaces. The proposed method performance is assessed on three 2D benchmark examples and a 3D case. Two out of the three 2D examples are also solved using a porosity-based topology optimization approach in which impermeable regions are penalized by a Brinkman term and useful conclusions are drawn. For a fair comparison, designs optimized using the porosity-based method are re-evaluated after extracting fluid-solid interfaces from the computed porosity fields.