Journal Home Online First Current Issue Archive For Authors Journal Information 中文版

Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering >> 2022, Volume 17, Issue 2 doi: 10.1007/s11465-022-0683-5

Robust isogeometric topology optimization for piezoelectric actuators with uniform manufacturability

1. Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;2. Hubei Key Laboratory for Engineering Structural Analysis and Safety Assessment, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;1. Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;2. Hubei Key Laboratory for Engineering Structural Analysis and Safety Assessment, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

Received: 2021-08-17 Accepted: 2022-08-15 Available online: 2022-06-15

Next Previous

Abstract

Piezoelectric actuators have received substantial attention among the industry and academia due to quick responses, such as high output force, high stiffness, high accuracy, and precision. However, the design of piezoelectric actuators always suffers from the emergence of several localized hinges with only one-node connection, which have difficulty satisfying manufacturing and machining requirements (from the over- or under-etching devices). The main purpose of the current paper is to propose a robust isogeometric topology optimization (RITO) method for the design of piezoelectric actuators, which can effectively remove the critical issue induced by one-node connected hinges and simultaneously maintain uniform manufacturability in the optimized topologies. In RITO, the isogeometric analysis replacing the conventional finite element method is applied to compute the unknown electro elastic fields in piezoelectric materials, which can improve numerical accuracy and then enhance iterative stability. The erode–dilate operator is introduced in topology representation to construct the eroded, intermediate, and dilated density distribution functions by non-uniform rational B-splines. Finally, the RITO formulation for the design of piezoelectric materials is developed, and several numerical examples are performed to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed RITO method.

Related Research