Topological Reconstruction Design of Cutterhead Panel for Shield Machine with High Specific Stiffness

To improve load-bearing capacity of cutterhead panels of shield machines, a stress constraint-based topology optimization method for the structure with a high specific stiffness was proposed. Firstly, the open ratio and strength were regarded as constraints, p-norm was used to condense the local stress of all elements into a global stress constraint to limit the maximum global stress of porous panels. The maximum global stiffness of the panels was regarded as the optimization objective. A multi-constraint topology optimization model with the maximum global stress was built. Next, the method of moving asymptotes was applied to solve the model to obtain the optimized topology configuration of the panels. Then, the crisp boundary of the optimized configuration was extracted by the level set method, and the configuration was modeled by geometric reconstruction method. Finally, the porous panel of a certain shield machine was dcsigned, and a static finite element analysis was performed on the panel. The results showed that compared with the existing panel, the designed panel with the same open ratio had higher stiffness and strength, which were improved by 7% and 19. 8% respectively. The proposed method can be effectively applied in topological reconstruction design of cutterhead panels of shield machines and can enrich the design theory of the panels. © 2023 Xi'an Jiaotong University. All rights reserved.