A Boundary Element Reconstruction (BER) Model for Moving Morphable Component Topology Optimization

The moving morphable component (MMC) topology optimization method, as a typical explicit topology optimization method, has been widely concerned. In the MMC topology optimization framework, the surrogate material model is mainly used for finite element analysis at present, and the effectiveness of the surrogate material model has been fully confirmed. However, there are some accuracy problems when dealing with boundary elements using the surrogate material model, which will affect the topology optimization results. In this study, a boundary element reconstruction (BER) model is proposed based on the surrogate material model under the MMC topology optimization framework to improve the accuracy of topology optimization. The proposed BER model can reconstruct the boundary elements by refining the local meshes and obtaining new nodes in boundary elements. Then the density of boundary elements is recalculated using the new node information, which is more accurate than the original model. Based on the new density of boundary elements, the material properties and volume information of the boundary elements are updated. Compared with other finite element analysis methods, the BER model is simple and feasible and can improve computational accuracy. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are verified by comparing it with the optimization results of the original surrogate material model through several numerical examples.