A NURBS-BASED TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION METHOD INCLUDING ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING CONSTRAINTS

Abstract

In this work, the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) topology optimization (TO) method is revisited and reformulated within the mathematical framework of NURBS functions. This implies several advantages: firstly, a NURBS surface allows exploiting an implicitly defined filter zone; secondly, the number of optimization variables (i.e. the parameters defining the NURBS surface) is relatively small when compared to the classical SIMP approach. Finally the TO can be carried out by including non-linearity (either geometric or material) or non-conventional manufacturing constraints, as those related to the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. In this work the TO is applied to a standard benchmark.