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[timlim123]

I have read through the documentation for topology optimization on ANSYS help completely and I still cannot figure out how to set up a response constraint that is not included in the default (mass,volume,stress,natural frequency). I want to set up a response constraint that involves the modal stiffness of the structure, any ideas on how could this be done or whether is it possible to do in ANSYS in the first place?

 

Thank you for spending time reading this.

[Sandeep Medikonda]

You can set up different response constraints by right-clicking on the Topology Optimization Cell in the structure tree. For Static Structural you would have:

for a dynamic or modal analysis you have a frequency constraint instead:

Coming to your question. For the objective of static analysis, by minimizing the compliance you are directly maximizing the stiffness. However, for modal analysis, you only have the option to maximize the frequency along with minimizing mass or volume. Which if you think about it, indirectly is maximizing the stiffness. Now you could also couple a structural and modal analysis and feed it into a topology optimization cell, i.e., set up a coupled static/dynamic objective

Note that you could play around with the weights to control the contribution of each objective

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Sandeep
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[timlim123]

Hi Sandeep,

 

Thank you for your thorough answers. However, I am already very well aware of how to execute topology optimization with the default constraints (mass,stress,natural frequency,etc). 

My question is on how do we go about adding our own response constraint into the topology optimization. For example, I am able to use APDL commands to extract the total strain energy of the object but how do I go about using the total strain energy data as one of the response constraint? I cannot find any APDL commands capable of doing this.  

 

If we think about it, there are APDL commands being run to execute the various response constraint that we have set up in the GUI. Thus, there will definitely a method to write our own response constraint.

[peteroznewman]

New Discussion on this topic.

[timlim123]

HI peter,

Thank you