Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Multi-material topology optimization for additive manufacturing using T

polytree-based adaptive polygonal finite elements
⁎ ⁎⁎
Khai Chau Nguyena, Phuong Tranb, , Hung Xuan Nguyena,c,
a
CIRTech Institute, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Viet Nam
b
Department of Civil & Infrastructure Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia
c
Department of Architectural Engineering, Sejong University, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05006, Republic of Korea

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The development of additive construction, which is an automated production process based layer-by-layer
Polytree control, opens a new era for building design. It creates opportunities for novel shapes that would not have been
Topology optimization technologically feasible in the past. The key to this revolution resides in the link between material development
Multi-material and computational-based optimization design tools to produce optimized structures. Topology optimization is an
Optimality criteria method
intelligent approach to seek the best design in many fields of computational mechanics. By analysing the in-
Modified adaptive filter
Alternating active phase
formation inside the determined domain, it changes the topology of such domain into a new design to satisfy the
3D-printing given criterion. In most of the work, ideal materials are assumed to implement the topology optimization
problems. Therefore, the optimal designs are still considered as reference or theoretical solutions while the
practical problems need more than that. The multi-material topology optimization (MMTOP) is established to
evaluate the behaviour of many materials in a problem and give an applicable solution for design. In this study,
we present a polytree-based adaptive methodology for multi-material topology optimization (MMTOP). Polytree
data structure is introduced as a general recursive multi-level mesh that is automatically refined in processing
based on error analysis. A new definition of filter radius is also proposed to improve the efficiency of filters and
optimized results. The combination of polytree meshes and adaptive filters not only clarifies the interfaces
between material phases (including void phase), but also decreases the computing time of the overall process in
comparison to using the regular fine meshes. Several benchmark and practical problems are considered to show
distinct features of the proposed method. 3D printed prototypes are presented to demonstrate the fabrication
feasibility of this method.

1. Introduction or reduction of formwork [7]. The advantages of AM become more

Unlike traditional manufacturing processes, additive manufacturing
(AM), often referred as 3D printing, fabricates components layer-by-
layer directly from a digital design. The rapid growth of AM in the last
ten years is owing to automotive, aerospace, defence and healthcare
industries, which have extensively utilized the benefits of AM in pro-
duct developments. From humble beginning with applications focused
on rapid prototyping to reduce the time required to produce prototypes
with complex geometries, AM has widened its impacts on multiple in-
dustries by simplifying manufacturing process from 3D model to a final
product. AM in construction [1] starts to follow the trend with aim to
address various current challenges including realising complex, func-
tional and innovative structures [2–5], work safety in extreme en-
vironments, shrinking the supply chain, decrease in skilled workforces,
prominent when required to realise structures or components with in-
tended design to optimize weight and material [6]. While, various
modelling tools have been developed to optimize structure, they are
limited to topology, size or shape optimization applications and not
much on material selection.
Topology optimization is one of the most interested topics to obtain
the ideal designs in many fields of computational mechanics. By con-
sidering the behaviour of material in the given domain, it rearranges
the initial layout of such domain into a new topology to satisfy the
given optimal conditions. There are many numerical approaches for
topology optimization developed by scientists to solve single material
multi-physics problems [9–17] after the pioneer paper published by
Bendsøe and Kikuchi [8]. Then the first multi-material problem is
modelled as composites from isotropic materials using homogenization

⁎
Corresponding author.
⁎⁎
Correspondence to: H.X. Nguyen, CIRTech Institute, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Viet Nam.
E-mail addresses: cn.khai@hutech.edu.vn (K.C. Nguyen), jonathan.tran@rmit.edu.au (P. Tran), ngx.hung@hutech.edu.vn (H.X. Nguyen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2018.12.005
Received 21 September 2018; Received in revised form 29 November 2018; Accepted 6 December 2018
0926-5805/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.
K.C. Nguyen et al.
Fig. 1. The shape function definition of (a) Wachspress, (c) piece-wise linear and their corresponding values computed at a boundary node (b), (d).
technique [18]. The three-phase composites based on this aspect are
studied for bulk modulus and extremal thermal expansion [19,20]. The
unified topology using parameterized formulation as a complement of
SIMP (Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization) and RAMP (Rational
Approximation of Material Properties) approaches was introduced for
anisotropic multi-material [21]. In the shape optimization aspect, the
level-set method is employed in multi-material model without an in-
terpolation scheme but the solutions shown the uncertainty due to the
mesh and initial configuration dependencies [22,23]. This approach is
also successfully applied for flexoelectric materials using isogeometric
analysis (IGA) [24] and B–spline elements [25]. The Cahn-Hilliard
formulation is handled in phase field model for multi-material topology
problems [26,27] with the slow convergence is a main drawback. Ta-
vakoli and Mohseni presented the alternating active phase algorithm to
solve the multi-material optimization problems [28]. This approach is
inherited from the single-phase topology optimization algorithm and
the similar Gauss-Seidel iteration scheme. Because the original problem
is decomposed into many binary phase sub-problems, the traditional
single-material optimization code can be improved to generalize the
multi-phase optimizer with a small adjustment.
The solution of topology optimizers can be enhanced using ad-
vanced elemental processing techniques. One of the most efficient ap-
proach is adaptive mesh refinement scheme which has been developed
to improve the accuracy of the solution and the robustness of the to-
pology solver. For example, the physical density is described by Maute
and Ramm using an adaptive design space in each design circle [29].
Lin and Chou [30] introduced a two-stage optimization approach that
engaged a coarse mesh in finite element processing and a fine mesh for
topology iterations. Bruggi and Verani [34] proposed a fully adaptive
strategy with two types of error estimators for interface triangular
elements. Based on the quadtree decomposition, polytree structure was
introduced to carry out limit analysis for cracked domains and single
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Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90
isotropic material topology optimization in [39,41] based on the idea of
quadtree meshes suggested by Tabarraei and Sukumar [42]. Therefore,
a general polygon with n edges (n > 3) can be discretized into (n + 1)
children polygons. Then the polytree meshes can be manipulated to
implement multi-phase topology optimization with new filter and error
indicator. After that, the smoothed geometry gathered from optimiza-
tion result can be fabricated in the 3D printer. Furthermore, it is quite
hard to find a standard quadrature rule for general polygonal elements.
For this reason, a number of approaches have been introduced to ap-
proximate the integration in such domains. Natarajan et al. presented a
midpoint rule defined on a unit disk using Schwarz–Christoffel mapping
for polygonal element [64] and linear elastic fracture mechanics [67].
Nguyen-Xuan et al. exploited selective integration for smoothed finite
elements to deal with volumetric locking and instabilities [69]. A
connection between virtual and smoothed finite elements is proposed to
enable the employment of single sub-cell for each element [70].
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The formulation
of the polygonal element and the multi-phase topology optimization
problems with modified filtering technique are given in Section 2. The
error indicator, the poly-tree mesh and post-processing for 3D printing
are provided in Section 3. Section 4 shows several numerical examples
and corresponding 3D printed prototypes. Section 5 presents the sum-
mary and closes our paper with affirmations.
2. Multi-material topology optimization
2.1. A finite element method for polygonal element (PFEM)
The primeval mesh ℑ of the computing domain Ωh contains nn
nodes, ne elements, ned edges. There are some barycentric coordinate
theories that have been introduced to construct the shape functions
Ν(x) in finite dimension space h for polytopes [45–58]. Herein, the
K.C. Nguyen et al. Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

Fig. 2. Flow chart of multi-material polytree-based topology optimization (MP-TOP) problem.

piecewise-barycentric coordinate is developed from a work done by where NjT3(x) and ∇NjT3 are the shape functions and their derivatives of
Floater et al. [40]. The approximate displacement space h is de- linear triangular element on sub-domains ΩT3, ΝiPL(xj) can be obtained
termined as from Eq. (2). Because piecewise functions are the linear mappings of
linear triangular element shape functions on polygonal element do-
h = {uh ∈ (1 (Ω))2, uh|Ωe ∈ ∞, uh|∂Ωe ∈ 0, Ωe ∈ I} (1)
main, they maintain the incident properties of basis function: positivity,
The piecewise shape functions are constructed in each triangular partition of unity and Kronecker-delta property. The approximate dis-
sub-domain of polygonal element as shown in Fig. 1(c). For convenient, placement uh ∈ h is defined on Ωe ∈ ℑ which follows the traditional FE
the boundaries of the sub-domains are determined by two nodes in an analysis given by
edge and a virtual node at the centroid of the element. The shape n
functions also satisfy the properties such as: partition of unity, non- uh (x) = ∑ Nie (x) I2 die, in Ωe
negative, Kronecker-delta. Because the linear triangular shape functions i=1 (4)
take effect on each sub-cell, piecewise functions are sharp in a com-
where n is number of nodes of the element, I2 is the unit matrix of 2nd
parison with Wachspress functions in Fig. 1(a, b). By this definition, the
rank, die is the nodal displacement vector, Nie is the piecewise shape
piecewise functions abide the following rules to appease the Kronecker-
function at the ith vertex on the element. Then, the discrete strain field
delta property:
is computed follows,
x = xj
⎧ 1 i
ΝiPL (xj ) = δij ≡ 0 x i ≠ xj εe = ∇s uh (x) = ∑ Bie die = Bede, in Ωe
⎨1/ n i (5)
⎩ xi = x (2)
where Bie = ∇sΝi is the strain-displacement matrix at the ith vertex of
Subsequently, basis functions and their first derivatives could be
Ωe,
calculated over sub-domains based on the traditional triangular basis as
T
follows e e
⎡ Ni, x 0 Ni, y ⎤
Bie = ⎢ e e ⎥
3 0 Ni, y Ni, x (6)
Nie (x) = ∑j=1 NTj 3 (x) NiPL (xj ) ⎣ ⎦
3
for x ∈ ΩT 3
∇Nie (x) = ∇NTj 3 (x) NiPL (xj ) The global stiffness matrix and load vector are obtained corre-
∑j=1 (3) spondingly by

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K.C. Nguyen et al. Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

where A is the FE assembly operator and D is the elastic modulus

matrix. The linear equation system of equations for unknown nodal
displacement vector d given by.
KPFEM d = f (9)

2.2. Problem formulation

The topology optimization problem is defined on a design domain

Ω ∈ ℜn (n = 2, 3) with boundary Γ = ∂Ω acted by a load vector. Let
ρ (x) ∈ L ∞ (Ω) be the relative density function of an arbitrary position
in Ω. At an arbitrary location in the design domain, ρ(x)is the density
vector of nph material phases. Then, the problem formulation is given as
follows:
min: c (ρ) = dT Kd
ρ

subject to: ∫Ω ρi dΩ = Vi
Kd = f
0 < ρmin ≤ ρi (x) ≤ 1 (10)
where c is the compliance; ρ is the density matrix; d, f and K are the
global displacement field, load vector and stiffness matrix, respectively
and Vi is the constrained volume fraction corresponding to compo-
nential density vector ρi. The problem (10) can be solved numerically
by the Optimality Criteria (OC) method due to its advantages
[11,43,44]. The constrain 0 < ρmin ≤ ρi(x) ≤ 1 is added to prevent the
singular stiffness matrix. The flow chart to solve the MMTOP problem is
shown in Fig. 2.

2.3. Material approximation

The isotropic equivalent material can be utilized to make a smooth

approximation for element stiffness matrix. For a simple approach, the
material domain is considered as the mixture of many different material
layers. The Young modulus in the modified SIMP approach for multi-
phase design problems is declared using a cumulative principle [26,28]:
m
E (ρ e ) = ∑ (ρie ) pEi0.
i=1 (11)
where Ei0
is the Young's modulus for ith phase (i = 1…m) and p is the
penalization power. The value of p will be influenced on the perfor-
mance and convergence rate of the optimization loop.

2.4. Alternating active phase algorithm

The alternating active phase algorithm (AAPA) is firstly introduced

by Tavakoli and Mohseni [28] which follows the single-phase optimi-
zation algorithms. The main idea of this method is finding the way to
modify slightly the binary phase topology optimization problems.
Generally, there are nph(nph − 1)/2 binary phase sub-problems corre-
sponding to nph-phase objective problem. Therefore, the single-phase
optimizer can be reused to solve each sub-problem at an optimization
stage. Then the volume constraint of each active-phase pair ‘a’ and ‘b’ in
a sub-problem follows the condition:
nph

∑ ρi (x ) = 1 − ∑ ρj (x ).
i = a, b j = 1, j ≠ a, b (12)
For an active-phase pair in a sub-problem, the updating scheme just
Fig. 3. The illustration of a–c) adaptive meshes and d) polytree structure.
changes the elemental densities of phase a. At the end of every single
loop, the densities of phase b should be updated by
ne ne
KPFEM = A (ρ e )ς KePFEM = A (ρ e )ς
e=1 e=1
∫Ω
e BeT DBedΩ
(7) ρb (x ) = ∑ ρi (x ) − ρa (x )
i = a, b (13)
In the history of topology optimization, the Optimal Criteria (OC)
f= ∫Ω ΝT bdΩ + ∫Γ t
ΝT tdΩ
(8) [11] is one of the most popular method for solving the optimization

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Fig. 4. Numerical integration scheme and mapping of quadrature points for arbitrary polygonal element.

Fig. 5. Decomposition of an arbitrary polygonal domain.

problems because of its robustness and stability. Therefore, in this The adaptive filter radius is also proposed by Chau et al. [72] as
paper, this algorithm is chosen to build the core of the optimizer. follows

2.5. Filtering Rfe = kr se (16)

The filters are essential tools for topology optimization using SIMP where kr is the adaptive factor, kr ≥ 2 to secure the efficacy of the filter
approach because of the checkerboard issue in the result. Although the and se is the size of the element e. From this strategy, the filtering length
polygonal meshes can reduce this problem by their element con- is offered to change locally for various different mesh sizes. The
nectivity type, we still add the filters in the optimization loop to in- adaptive factor can start with an initial value and then it should be
crease the convergence rate and improve the solution. The mesh-in- decreased gradually to stabilize the solution. As mentioned in the ori-
dependence filter (MIF) is presented by Sigmund et al. [8,71] for ginal paper [72], the adaptive filter shows some advantages for the
topology optimization in adjusting the sensitivity of every element as meshes which the element size varies in each mesh level. Furthermore,
the modified adaptive filter is handled by using the floating adaptive
∂c͠ 1 ∂c
∂ρi
=
ρi
∑ ∂ρj
wij ρi factor kr. In this study, kr is reduced slowly from 3.5 to 2.2 when the
j ∈ Sf (14) numerical error of the objective function achieves a relatively small
value of 10−2 for each mesh level. This strategy ensures the filter more
where Sf is the sub-domain surround the element ith and wij are
stable compared to the previous work. Accordingly, it helps to minimize
weighting factors representing the influence of the jth neighbor element
the length of adaptive regions and restrict the numbers of new elements
to ith element inside Sf,
while the sharpness is ensured along the interfaces. Some numerical
⎧ Rfe − d (i, j ) examples will be given in Section 3.3 to shown the benefits of adaptive
⎪ ∑ (Re − d (i, k )) if j ∈ Sf filter.
wij = f
⎨ k ∈ Sf
⎪ 0 if j ∈ Sf
⎩ (15)

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a) Generated stereolithography(STL) geometry with overlapping regions.

b) Smoothed geometry without overlapping interfaces.

Fig. 6. Geometry processing for 3D printing.

Fig. 7. The MBB beam model (a) a whole design domain; (b) a right half design domain.

3. Implementation of adaptive mesh and polytree structure nph ne

Θeρ |Ωe ∈ I = ∑p =1 ∑i =edge (ρpe − ρpi |Ωi ∈ I )2Γe ,
1 i (17)
3.1. Error indicator and refinement strategy where nedgee
is number of edges of element e and ρpi|Ωi∈ℑ
is the density
value of phase p of element i which is connected with the element e by
In the topology optimization especially multi-phase problems, one the edge Γie. The element set ℵ ⊆ ℑ is picked up for adaptive processing
of the most important thing is how to express the resultant layout that in later optimization loops which follows the criterion:
the material phases are separate by the interface curves. Because each
element takes a constant density inside its domain, it will be better if we {Θkρ }Ωk ∈ℵ ⊂ {Θeρ } I such that Θkρ ≥ θ max{Θeρ}, for some θ ∈ (0, 1). (18)
can sub-divide the boundary elements to narrow the interfaces between
the material phases. Chau et al. [72] introduced a general way to attain
3.2. The polytree mesh interpretation
high resolution along the boundary curves with flexible refinement. The
error indicator Θ = {Θρe} determines the density difference of an ele-
Polytree is a data structure which constructed based on quadtree
ment in a relation with its neighbors and is defined as
decomposition for adaptive mesh. By subdividing a n edges 2D

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K.C. Nguyen et al. Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

Fig. 9. Multi-phase MBB beam: convergence history of objective function.

a) Initially regular mesh and step 1

b) Step 2

Fig. 10. Perspective view of the smoothed 2.5D MBB optimized beam with
different colors present different materials (top) and the 3D printed prototype
using the Connex3 printer utilizing PolyJet Technology.

c) Step 3
Fig. 8. Topology-optimized continuum models and the corresponding meshes
in computing steps.

polygonal element into (n + 1) children recursively, it acquires any

advantages from quadtree mesh for computation engineering. In the
polytree structure of a multi-level adaptive mesh as shown in Fig. 3, the
hanging node problems should be resolved to preserve the numerical
solution. However, the hanging node element could be treated as a
normal polygon through a reference element and a double mapping
Fig. 11. Geometry and boundary conditions for hammer bridge pier.
scheme (see Fig. 4). Then the element stiffness matrix in Eq. (7) should
be converted in reference coordinates through the Jacobian matrix

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K.C. Nguyen et al. Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

a) Step 1

b) Step 2

c) Step 3
Fig. 12. Optimization results in each step corresponding to different mesh levels.

Jξ = ∂x/∂ξ: basis functions and weights at the integration point for standard tri-
angular element Ωη, respectively and Jη is the Jacobian matrix of the
KePFEM = ∫Ω
e BeT DBedΩ = ∫Ω
ξ BeT DBe |Jξ | dΩ (19) integral transformation from ΩΔξ to Ωη. Therefore, numerical integra-
tion in Eq. (19) can be rewritten as
The numerical integration could be employed in reference domain nn ng
to approximate the integral in (19). Because there is no standard KePFEM = ∑ ∑ BeT DBe |Jξ | wΔmG
quadrature rule for polygonal domain, several approaches have been k=1 m=1
suggested to seek the equivalent integration points in [60–70]. In this nn ng

study, we handled the Gauss quadrature rule of standard triangle for = ∑∑ (∇s Ν (x Gm))T D (∇s Ν (x Gm))|Jξ | wΔmG
k=1 m=1 (21)
virtual sub-domains extracted from polygonal element as given in
ξ
Fig. 4. Nevertheless, the Gauss point coordinates and their weights of where ng indicates the number of Gauss points on sub-triangle ΩΔ and
the first mapping scheme in the reference space should be recomputed ∇sΝ(xGm) is the shape function derivatives in the physical space. The
as value of ∇Nj(xGm) is determined from the first Jacobian matrix Jξ by the
3
mapping: ∇Njξ(xGm) = Jξ−1∇Njξ(ξΔGm), where ∇Njξ(ξΔGm) are evaluated
ξm = ∑ Niη (ηGm ) ξiΔ at Gauss point ξΔGm in the reference space Ωξ.
ΔG
i=1
wΔmG = w η (ηGm )|Jη| (20) 3.3. Post-processing for additive manufacturing

where ξΔi is the ith coordinate of virtual sub-triangle ΩΔξ; Nη and wη are It is clear that the rebuilding geometry plays an essential role for 3D

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K.C. Nguyen et al.
Fig. 13. Perspective view of smoothed 2.5D hammerhead bridge pier design.
Fig. 14. Geometry and boundary conditions for torsional disc.
printing process. In order to generate the stereolithography (STL)
output file suitable for 3D printing from optimized results, the opti-
mized polygonal mesh should be decomposed into triangular mesh as
described in Fig. 5. By this way, a vertex is added to create n triangles
from each n-side polygonal domain. The geometries which are exported
from the optimized results may include some overlapping sections at
the material interfaces as shown in Fig. 6(a) and compromising the 3D
printing process. This issue occurs due to the checkerboard effect when
using SIMP approach, which allows all phase densities to vary from
nearly 0 to 1 in an element. We proposed an effective way to resolve
this issue by simply removing the softer material and preserving the
harder one as illustrated in Fig. 6(b). Besides, the outer boundaries of
material phases should be replaced by smoothed curves obtaining from
approximation.
4. Numerical examples
In this section, some numerical examples are presented to demon-
strate the performance and the convergence behaviour of the proposed
method. The well-known Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) beam is
optimized in the first example with symmetric constraint. In the second
and third examples, the multiple load test cases are released to consider
the distribution of multi-material in symmetric designs. In all examples,
the MMTOP scheme is applied with Young's moduli E = [9 7 6 10−9]
[N/m2] and Poisson's ratio ν = 0.3, respectively as in the original
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Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90
paper. The material phases are indicated by red, blue and green colors
and the penalization parameter p is chosen to be equal 3 to stabilize the
solutions.
4.1. MBB beam problem
First, the MBB beam as shown in Fig. 7 is analysed to compare with
the solutions published in [72]. The full design domain with a unit
concentrated load at the central point of upper edge is simplified to an
equivalent domain by adding the symmetric constraint as in Fig. 7(b).
The volume fraction vector is still maintained to be vf = [0.15 0.075
0.075 0.7] for initial structured mesh with 1333 polygonal elements.
After passing three refinement loops, the minimum compliance takes
the value of 41.14 that smaller than the result in [72] (42.44). This
solution offers a better design because of the modified adaptive filter
and new basis function.
The optimization procedure begins with 1333 regularly distributed
density variables for each material phase. During the optimization
process, the physical mesh, together with the design variables, are
raised from 1333 to 4901 in the first refinement, and attains 19,113
after the second refinement. The topology-optimized designs acquired
under refinement levels are shown in Fig. 8, where figures on the top
side represent the physical mesh and those on the bottom side describe
the density field. It is seen that the “hardest” material (red) is added at
the upper and lower sides where the internal forces of tension-com-
pression state reach extreme value while the “softer” material compo-
nents (blue and green) are placed at the middle side which are sus-
tained under lower internal forces. Evidently, the material distribution
at the interfaces becomes smoother after each refinement step. The
convergence history of the objective function and the corresponding
optimized geometries given in Fig. 9. Because the approximate finite
element solution is improved for the higher mesh level, compliance
convergence curve has some discontinuities at the transitions of two
optimization stages.
The 2D topology-optimized design can be extruded for additive
manufacturing process as shown in Fig. 10. Nonetheless it worth to
notice that the material interfaces in the geometry file must be keep in
non-overlapping state. Basically, every material component should be
detached and assigned properties to a printable file.
4.2. Hammerhead bridge pier
Hammerhead pier is released to study the robustness of optimiza-
tion code for multiple loads problem. The problem domain is typically
designed in the single column type as in Fig. 11. Vertical shear loads are
located evenly at the top line of the overhanging sections. The volume
fraction vector is set to be vf = [0.16 0.08 0.08 0.68] for the symmetric
initial mesh in Fig. 12(a). The optimization loop is started with 500
elements for the input mesh and completed with 10,874 elements after
achieving the convergence criterion.
In the optimal topology, the “red” material is dispensed along two
sides from the fixed support location where the local equivalent stress is
higher than the others. Then this layout can be renovated to a 2.5D
structure for 3D-printing as shown in Fig. 13.
4.3. Tangent loaded disc
In this section, we introduce the torsional disc problem and show
the 3D-printing experiment for its prototype. The design area and
boundary conditions are given in Fig. 14. The fixed support is applied at
the inner circle of the annular domain. For convenient, the torsional
load is simplified into eight periodic tangential point loads at the outer
circle. The material is restrained by the volume fraction vector
vf = [0.08 0.16 0.24 0.52]. The overall configurations of the results
corresponding with different mesh levels while the number of elements
is varied from 1000 to 22,825 as described in Fig. 15. It is obvious that
K.C. Nguyen et al. Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90

a) Step 1

b) Step 2

c) Step 3
Fig. 15. Optimization results under each step using adaptive polygonal meshes.

the material layout is rapidly improved by the adaptive refinement
scheme and reconstructed to an interesting structure as in Fig. 15(b, c).
The topology design is then converted to a CAD model and built a
physical prototype using PolyJet technology as shown in Fig. 16.
5. Concluding remarks
In this paper, we introduced the approach of the realisation from
numerical modelling to additive manufacturing of optimized structures
with multiple material selections. A novel adaptive filter in association
with a polytree-based adaptive mesh strategy for multi-material to-
pology optimization problems was presented. This innovative algorithm
provided a significant connection between the design idea and the final
product because it helped reduced the time in repeat loops at the de-
signing stage. The polytree-based adaptive strategy also made the post-
processing step become easier through smoothed boundary description.

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K.C. Nguyen et al.
Fig. 16. The final steps for making complex structure prototype: a) Rebuild the
2.5D smoothed geometry and b) Produce the prototype using 3D-printer.
This scheme supplies smooth boundaries for optimal structures while
reducing the computational cost compared with the regularly fine mesh
and takes fewer essential iterations to gain the solution convergence.
Importantly, the proposed method demonstrated an effective material
mix at the interface, which is required for 3D printing process. It also
showed advantages over the approximate value approach in post-pro-
cessing using iso-lines or iso-surfaces. By adding an adaptive filter ra-
dius set into traditional filters, the boundary curves become sharper,
which is critical for additive manufacturing. It is to emphasize that the
optimal multi-phase structures could be printed even in micro level. In
addition, this work can be straightforwardly extended to three-dimen-
sional problems in which the polyhedral shape functions should be
constructed in tetrahedral sub–cells. Moreover, the quadratic seren-
dipity shape functions [58] offer quadratic precision and treat distorted
meshes for polyhedra. This opens up possibilities for many engineering
applications in general and automated building construction in parti-
cular.
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Automation in Construction 99 (2019) 79–90
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the facilities and technical assistance of
the RMIT Advanced Manufacturing Precinct.
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