Displacement minimization of thermoelastic structures by evolutionary thickness design

Structural optimization aims at finding an appropriate material distribution to achieve the best structural performance. In this paper, the evolutionary structural optimization method is further developed to deal with thermoelastic optimization, where structural material is progressively redistributed so as to minimize the displacement under thermal and mechanical loading. To evaluate the effects of material removal or addition on the displacement of thermoelastic structures, a sensitivity number is proposed on the basis of the thickness variation of an element. The method proves to be very simple in its mathematical operations and suitable for computer implementation. The numerical examples are compared against those by the homogenization method to verify and validate this method of solving thermoelastic optimizations. In addition, the effect of various temperature distributions on the final optimum structures is investigated in detail. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.