Abstract:

In the field of structural design,thermal effects have been extensively discussed.In this paper,based on the topology optimization method,the design of the thermally-driven compliant mechanism is investigated,and a corresponding parallel penalization model is constructed.The core of this model is to decompose a complex multi- ple-material thermal-mechanical coupling problem into a series of single-material thermal-mechanical coupling sub- problems.Then,the sub-problems are solved concurrently,and according to the requirement of the overall system,the solutions to all the sub-problems are coordinated so as to achieve the solution to the original problem.For all the sub-problems,the thermal-mechanical coupling optimization models are constructed based on the solid isotropic ma- terial with penalization (SIMP) model,and then the sequential coupling method is adopted to conduct the thermal- structural coupling physics analysis,thus achieving concurrent and independent solutions.The constructed model is simple in concept and practice and can be used to handle an arbitrary number of candidate materials.In addition,it can avoid fragile topologies and is,therefore，helpful in manufacturing.Finally,the effectiveness of the construc- ted model is verified by several numerical examples.

Key words: topology optimization, compliant mechanism, thermal-mechanical coupling, sensitivity analysis