TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION WITH DESIGN-DEPENDENT LOADS BY LEVEL SET APPROACH

In the present paper,a new method of topology optimization of linearly elastic continuum structures subject to design-dependent loads is proposed.The new approach is developed in the context of level set method(LSM).By employing this approach,the structural topology can be represented by a level set function implicitly,thus the optimization of the structural topology is transferred to finding the optimal level set function of a higher dimension.As a result,the difficulties associated with the description of the boundary curve and application of the design-dependent load can be overcome in an efficient and robust way.Numerical examples demonstrate the advantage and the effectiveness of the proposed approach.