A hybrid topology optimization methodology combining simulated annealing and SIMP

Structural topologies obtained by SIMP are not completely satisfactory since they exhibit areas with intermediate densities which lack physical meaning. Thus, the designer is left with the nontrivial decision of rounding and approximating the solution. This paper presents SA–SIMP, a hybrid methodology that couples simulated annealing and SIMP under a look-ahead scheme that gradually fixes or removes elements with intermediate densities (i.e., gray areas in SIMP). After designing several strategies and testing them on different structures, SA–SIMP consistently led to topologies with both lower compliances and less gray areas than those obtained by SIMP alone.