A TWO-LEVEL DECOMPOSITION METHOD FOR SHAPE OPTIMIZATION OF STRUCTURES

The paper proposes a two-level decomposition method for shape optimization of structures. The optimization problem is divided into two subproblems on the basis of the di¤erent e¤ects on structural behaviour of di¤erent kinds of design variables. A minimum mass subproblem is solved to determine the sizing variables and a constraint evaluation function based on norm optimization is minimized to determine the shape variables. An e¦cient coupling technique is used between the subproblems to ensure very rapid and steady convergence. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the e¤ectiveness of the method.