Continuum structural layout in consideration of the balance of the safety and the properties of structures

In the article, a new approach considering structural local failure for topology optimization of continuum structure is proposed. It aims at not only lowering the risk of local failure in the concerned structural regions, but also ensuring a good stiffness of the structure. The local failure may be caused by the structural uncertainties or possible structural fatigue. To this end, a criterion to evaluate the effect of one local failure on the structure is introduced. This criterion is minimized to reduce the probability of structural damage based on an initialized structure whose compliance is optimized. Solid Isotropic with Material Penalization (SIMP) method and Optimality Criteria (OC) method are combined to solve the design problem. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by a series of numerical examples. Furthermore, experiments merging with additive manufacturing technique are taken to prove the practical ability of the method in actual engineering.