Title of Paper:A multi-material topology optimization approach for wrinkle-free design of cable-suspended membrane structures

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Date of Publication:2017-06-01

Journal:COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS

Included Journals:SCIE、EI

Volume:59

Issue:6

Page Number:967-980

ISSN No.:0178-7675

Key Words:Membrane structures; Cables; Wrinkle; Topology optimization; Principal stress

Abstract:In order to eliminate stress-related wrinkles in cable-suspended membrane structures and to provide simple and reliable deployment, this study presents a multi-material topology optimization model and an effective solution procedure for generating optimal connected layouts for membranes and cables. On the basis of the principal stress criterion of membrane wrinkling behavior and the density-based interpolation of multi-phase materials, the optimization objective is to maximize the total structural stiffness while satisfying principal stress constraints and specified material volume requirements. By adopting the cosine-type relaxation scheme to avoid the stress singularity phenomenon, the optimization model is successfully solved through a standard gradient-based algorithm. Four-corner tensioned membrane structures with different loading cases were investigated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in automatically finding the optimal design composed of curved boundary cables and wrinkle-free membranes.