Optimal design of compliant thermal-structural microactuators with geometrical nonlinearities

The element-free Galerkin(EFG) method is integrated into topology optimization for designing compliant thermal-structural microactuators, with geometrical nonlinearities considered. Taking into account its more capable of capturing the natural behavior of nonlinear compliant mechanisms than the standard finite element method (FEM), the meshfree method is employed to discretize the governing equations and the bulk density field. Furthermore, the design sensitivity analysis is performed by incorporating the adjoint approach into the meshfree method. The availability of the proposed method is demonstrated by designing compliant actuators in which both linear and nonlinear modelings are considered.