Proceedings in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, 16 June 2010

Topology optimization based on the finite cell method

Alexander Düster∗1 , Jamshid Parvizian2 , and Ernst Rank3
1
Numerische Strukturanalyse mit Anwendungen in der Schiffstechnik (M-10), Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg,
Schwarzenbergstraße 95 c, 21073 Hamburg, Germany
2
Department of Industrial Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
3
Lehrstuhl für Computation in Engineering, Technische Universität München, Germany

We present an extension of the Finite Cell Method (FCM) to topology optimization utilizing the Fully Stressed Design (FSD)
approach. The proposed method is briefly explained in 2D and its potential is demonstrated by means of a linear elastic 3D
problem.
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The finite cell method The main idea of the FCM [1, 2], which can be interpreted as a combination of a fictitious domain
method with high-order finite elements [3], is to completely separate the description of the geometry from the discretization
of the displacement field. To be more specific consider a two-dimensional problem of linear elasticity, stated in terms of the
weak form of equilibrium
B(u, v) = F (v)
nc Z
X nc Z
X nc Z
X
T T
[L v] α C [L u] dΩ = α v f dΩ + vT t̄ dΓ (1)
c=1 Ω c=1 Ω c=1 Γ
c c c

where u is the displacement vector, v the test function, L the standard strain-displacement operator, C is the elasticity matrix,
f denotes volume loads and t̄ corresponds to prescribed tractions at the Neumann boundary. The discretization of the domain
is based on a Cartesian grid applying nc quadrilaterals in 2D or hexahedrals in 3D. Since the grid does not need to conform
to the geometry of the domain, instead of finite elements we use the term cells. The quality of the approximation of the
displacement field is controlled by increasing the polynomial degree of the hierarchic shape functions of the cells. To account
for the geometry, an adaptive integration scheme is applied to compute the stiffness matrices and load vectors of the cells,
where α represents the density of the material, i.e. α = 1 corresponds to (full) material and α = 0 to void. In [1, 2] it has
been demonstrated that the FCM provides exponential convergence for 2D and 3D problems of solid mechanics.

(xi , yj )T = Q3 (ξi , ηj )

η
ξ
c=3 c=4
η
y y ξ
l=1
c=1 c=2
x k=6 x

(ξk , ηl )T = Q−1
2 (xk , yl )

Fig. 1 Material grid composed of 8 × 8 voxels (left-hand side) and independent finite cell mesh with 2 × 2 cells

Here we extend the FCM to topology optimization utilizing the FSD approach which is a zero-order method since it
does not require the computation of sensitivities as compared to other methods, see, for example, [4]. It can be shown that
under certain circumstances (present in statically determinate structures) the FSD yields an optimal solution, i.e. a minimum
weight design for a given stress constraint. Unfortunately, these circumstances are met only in very rare cases. However,
many numerical examples have demonstrated that the FSD yields very efficient designs. In the literature, the FSD is usually
combined with low-order finite elements where each element is assigned to one material density mixing the discretization
of the displacement field and the geometric description. The drawback of this approach is that refinement of the geometric
description increases simultaneously the number of degrees of freedom which might not be necessary at all. In order to strictly
∗ Corresponding author: e-mail: alexander.duester@tu-harburg.de, Phone: +49(0)40-42878-6083, Fax: +49(0)40-42878-6090

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separate the discretization of the displacements and geometry, we introduce an independent material grid which is composed
vM
of voxels, representing the material distribution, i.e. the spatial variation of α. During repeated computations, α = ( σσobj )ρ
is adjusted according to the stress distribution in the domain, where σ vM is the von Mises stress, σ obj the corresponding von
Mises objective stress and ρ a numerical parameter adjusted to ρ = 3. In this way, material is added to highly stressed regions
of a design and removed from understressed regions. During the iteration, α is computed according to the stress ratio and
afterwards restricted to α ∈ [αmin , 1.0], where αmin is set to a value of αmin ≈ 10−8 in order to avoid ill-conditioning of
the stiffness matrix. The interpolation of α between the material grid and the finite cell grid involves the mapping functions
Qc (ξ, η) of the cells which can be efficiently evaluated due to the Cartesian structure of both grids.

Numerical example To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method we consider the topology optimization of a
linear elastic cube. The cube is clamped at the lower surface and loaded by a pressure p = |t̄| = 500 at the upper surface as
indicated by the grey shaded areas in Fig. 2. The finite cell grid is composed of 150 hexahedral cells with hierarchic shape
functions of polynomial degree p = 6. The material grid, which is displayed in Fig. 3 (first row, first column), consists of
1003 voxels, describing the material distribution with an initial value of α = 1. Applying the toplogy optimization with a

t̄

clamped

L L

Fig. 2 Cube of length L = 12 with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions and a corresponding discretization with 150 cells.

prescribed objective stress of σ obj = 100 yields after approximately 15 iterations steps a converged solution. Some of the
iteration steps are depicted in Fig. 3. From this a rapid convergence of the FCM-FSD approach can be observed.

Fig. 3 Material distribution during the FCM-FSD iteration. The iteration steps 0 (start), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 15 (final step with converged
solution) are displayed. Red indicates full material (α = 1) and blue void (α = αmin ).

Conclusions An extension of the FCM utilizing the FSD approach has been demonstrated to yield a fast convergence of
a topology optimization. Future work will focus on more detailed investigation of the properties of the proposed method
considering different benchmarks and an extension to different objective functions.

Acknowledgements This work has been supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This support is gratefully acknowledged.

References
[1] J. Parvizian, A. Düster, and E. Rank, Comput. Mech. 41, 121 (2007).
[2] A. Düster and J. Parvizian, and E. Rank, Comput. Methods in Appl. Mech. and Engrg. 197, 3768 (2008).
[3] B.A. Szabó, A. Düster, and E. Rank in Encyclopedia of Computational Mechanics, edited by E. Stein, R. de Borst, T.J.R. Hughes,
(John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2004), vol. 1, chap. 5.
[4] M.P. Bendsøe, O. Sigmund, Topology Optimization - Theory, Methods and Applications (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004)

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