Multifunctional Structural Design and Topology Optimizations

Markets have become significantly more competitive and having small gains in performance can make or break success. Optimization can be measure in many ways, cost, weight, deflection, pressure drop and life are but a few. By either parameterization or topological optimization designs can be improved to their maximum potential. The siblings to optimization are sensitivity and robustness. Some designs may have great performance under ideal manufacturing and environmental conditions, but minor variations quickly degrade this. Often the best design isn’t the one that has the best performance for one condition, but has good performance over a variety of conditions. It should be noted that this can be used to reduce costs as well. Maintaining tight machine tolerances will increase costs. It the
design is not sensitive to this variable, these can be opened up.