Optimal Structural Topology Design for Energy Absorption: A Heuristic Approach

Abstract

Abstract A new approach to design the topology for structures under crash events is presented. The approach is heuristic in essence, but numerical experiments have shown its uses in real problems. Using an interpolation between porous and solid (non-porous) materials plus a re-design rule to by-pass gradient computations the new approach is able to determine better locations of material and density in a given structural domain for kinetic energy dissipation. An example is presented to illustrate the methodology.