Abstract: Due to rapid advances in additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, there is virtually no limits to designing materials and structures that optimize structural and multidisciplinary criteria such as stiffness to weight ratio, buckling resistance, thermal, dynamic or acoustic responses, etc. Apart from many theoretical and intuitive studies, topology optimization has been a major driver in developing tools for systematic generation of such optimal structures and materials.

The original works on topology optimization considered distribution of optimal infinitely periodic anisotropic microstructures but this approach was later abandoned in favor of simpler density or level-set approaches. However, recent developments in AM techniques have re-spurred the interest in the microstructure approach with the aim of producing simple and manufacturable structural designs from optimal microstructures through efficient mapping techniques. These approaches entail performing multi-variable homogenization-based topology optimization on a coarse grid, followed by mappings to fine-scale designs, including steps to control minimum/maximum feature sizes and manufacturability.

The talk will present recent advances in the mapping approach, including better control of local periodicity, as well as mapping of microstructures optimized for local buckling response.