A stress-influence-function with adaptive strength feature approach for stress constrained continuum topology optimization via small-loop sequential strategy

Recently, the stress-influence-function (SIF) approach is presented for stress constrained continuum topology optimization. The SIF approach provides an alternative for continuum topology optimization with stress constraints. However, the SIF approach is not good at controlling the maximum stress of the elements compared to the conventional approach. In the study, the stress-influence-function with adaptive strength feature (SIF-ASF) approach via small-loop sequential strategy is proposed to achieve better control on the maximum elemental stress. First, the stress constrained continuum topology optimization formulation is given and the SIF approach is briefly introduced. Then the SIF-ASF approach is proposed for stress constrained continuum topology optimization, in which the strength feature in the stress influence function is adjusted in each iterative step of the optimization process. The adjoint-vector based sensitivity analysis to the design variables is further discussed. Three numerical examples are given to illustrate the applicability and validity of the proposed SIF-ASF approach. It is shown that the proposed SIF-ASF approach can achieve better control on the maximum elemental stress than the SIF approach. Moreover, the proposed SIF-ASF approach may obtain a lighter structure than the conventional approach.