Reliability-Based Topology Optimization of Thermo-Elastic Structures with Stress Constraint

Traditional topology optimization of thermo-elastic structures is based on deterministic conditions, without considering the influence of uncertainty factors. To address the impact uncertainty on structural strength, a reliability-based topology optimization of thermo-elastic structure with stress constraint is proposed. The probabilistic uncertainty quantities are associated with the structural material property, mechanical loads and the thermal stress coefficient with the topology optimization formulation considering volume minimization and stress constraint. The relaxation stress method combined with normalized p-norm function is adopted to condense whole element stresses into the global stress measurement that approximates the maximum stress. The adjoint variable method is utilized to derive the sensitivity of the stress constraint and the optimization problem is solved by the method of moving asymptote (MMA). Finally, several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed approach. Compared with the deterministic design, the reliability design has distinct topological configurations and the optimized structures maintain a higher reliability level.