Robust topology optimization of continuum structures with smooth boundaries using moving morphable components

Topology optimization has been increasingly used in various industrial designs as a numerical tool to optimize the material layout of a structure. However, conventional topology optimization approaches implicitly describe the structural design and require additional post-processing to generate a manufacturable topology with smooth boundaries. To this end, this paper proposes a novel robust topology optimization approach to produce an optimized topology with smooth boundaries directly. A truncated Karhunen–Loeve expansion and a sparse grid collocation method are integrated with the explicit moving morphable components method for uncertainty representation and propagation, respectively. The performance of the proposed method is assessed on three numerical examples of continuum structures under loading and material uncertainties through comparison with several robust topology optimization approaches. Results show that the proposed method is superior to the benchmark methods in terms of the balance among robustness of the objective function, boundary smoothness, and computational efficiency.