AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO SHAPE DESIGN SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

A novel method is presented in this paper for calculating shape design sensitivity, which is based on the finite difference method (FDM). By analysing the numerical procedure of the FDM, the perturbation of the geometry is replaced by a perturbation load which can be calculated once the stress field of the initial problem and the design boundary perturbation are known. The final shape design sensitivity is obtained by solving the perturbation problem which has the same geometry and the kinematical boundary condition as the initial problem, but under the perturbation loads. Therefore the new method does not require the calculation of the matrices of the perturbed structure, and is independent of the perturbation step. A numerical implementation of the finite difference load method (FDLM) is described in which the boundary element method is used to evaluate the structural response. The numerical examples demonstrate that this new method for shape design sensitivity analysis is very accurate.