Topology synthesis of thermomechanical compliant mechanisms with geometrical nonlinearities using meshless method

The element-free Galerkin (EFG) method, one of the important meshless methods, is integrated into topology optimization and a new topology optimization method for designing thermomechanical actuated compliant mechanisms with geometrical nonlinearities is presented. The meshless method is employed to discretize the governing equations and the bulk density field. Using meshless method to analyze the thermomechanical model is better consistent with the natural behavior of large-displacement compliant mechanisms than using the standard finite element method (FEM). The optimization formulation is developed using the SIMP and meshless methods. The nonlinear design sensitivity analysis is performed by incorporating the adjoint approach into the meshless method. The filtering of the sensitivity developed corrects the topology including few discontinuous scattered points. The geometrically nonlinear design sensitivity analysis is performed by incorporating the adjoint approach into the meshless method. The availability of the proposed method is demonstrated by designing compliant actuators in which both linear and nonlinear modeling are considered. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.