by Lawrence S. Gould > Contributing Editor
Topology optimization cuts part
development time and costs,
material consumption, and product
weight. And it works with additive,
subtractive, and all other types of
manufacturing processes, too.
Topology optimization balances material
use against the stifness of a part. In the
past two years, it has gained popularity
because of its availability in computer-
aided design (CAD) software that is both
easy-to-use and afordable. Also, the
optimization is great at creating strong,
lightweight parts with less material.
Last, topology optimization shortens
that design process considerably. From
a designer's standpoint, after applying
the optimization, says Russell Vernon,
application engineer at solidThinking
( solidThinking.com ), "you're basically
starting with an ideal solution, from a
mathematically efcient design." That
ideal is a design already optimized
for material consumption, product
weight, and manufacturability. These
are key criteria for parts created
through additive manufacturing, mold
making, and many other conventional
manufacturing operations, such as
casting and machining.
One such CAD package is Inspire from
solidThinking, a wholly owned subsidiary
of Altair ( altair.com ). Inspire, which
works on both Windows and Apple
computers, may be considered light on
CAD—it's fne for geometric modeling,
but it works mostly with existing CAD
tools—but it is heavy on topology opti-
mization. The combination lets product
designers, engineers, and even people
not expert in designing or engineering
generate and investigate structurally
efcient part and product designs.
ANALYZING TOPOLOGY
Topology optimization is a mathematical
approach, introduced in 1988, for
optimizing structures. It selects the
elements in a fnite element mesh (the
design space) that best maximize the
tradeofs in both minimizing material
usage and maximizing part strength
for a given manufacturing process.
The approach was commercialized
as a solver, but relegated to high-
end analysis because it required a
preprocessor solver for meshing.
In Inspire, explains Vernon, "the topology
optimization is all a fnite element
p Topology optimization was applied to an initial part design (gray), resulting in
lightweighting and reduced material usage (yellow). While the optimization worked
in the background, Inspire software let the design engineer perform some basic
modal analysis and see how the loads applied (blue).
AD&P; > June 2015 > FEATURE > Topology Optimization Explained > Lawrence S. Gould > lsg@lsgould.com
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