Material distribution topology optimization problems are generally ill-posed if no restriction or regularization method is used. To deal with these issues, filtering procedures are routinely applied. In a recent paper, we presented a framework that encompasses the vast majority of currently available density filters. In this paper, we show that these nonlinear filters ensure existence of solutions to a continuous version of the minimum compliance problem. In addition, we provide a detailed description on how to efficiently compute sensitivities for the case when multiple of these nonlinear filters are applied in sequence. Finally, we present large-scale numerical experiments illustrating some characteristics of these cascaded nonlinear filters.

In material distribution topology optimization, restriction methods are routinely applied to obtain wellposed optimization problems and to achieve meshindependence of the resulting designs. One of the most popular restriction methods is to use a filtering procedure. In this paper, we present a framework where the filtering process is viewed as a quasi-arithmetic mean (or generalized f-mean) over a neighborhood with the possible addition of an extra "projection step". This framework includes the vast majority of available filters for topology optimization. The covered filtering procedures comprise three steps: (i) element-wise application of a function, (ii) computation of local averages, and (iii) element-wise application of another function. We present fast algorithms that apply this type of filters over polytope-shaped neighborhoods on regular meshes in two and three spatial dimensions. These algorithms have a computational cost that grows linearly with the number of elements and can be bounded irrespective of the filter radius.

This paper presents a density-based topology optimization approach to design compact wideband coaxialto-waveguide transitions. The underlying optimization problem shows a strong self penalization towards binary solutions, which entails mesh-dependent designs that generally exhibit poor performance. To address the self penalization issue, we develop a filtering approach that consists of two phases. The first phase aims to relax the self penalization by using a sequence of linear filters. The second phase relies on nonlinear filters and aims to obtain binary solutions and to impose minimum-size control on the final design. We present results for optimizing compact transitions between a 50-Ohm coaxial cable and a standard WR90 waveguide operating in the X-band (8-12 GHz).

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This is the published version of a paper published in Structural and multidisciplinary optimization (Print). Citation for the original published paper (version of record):Hägg, L., Wadbro, E. (2018) On minimum length scale control in density based topology optimization AbstractThe archetypical topology optimization problem concerns designing the layout of material within a given region of space so that some performance measure is extremized. To improve manufacturability and reduce manufacturing costs, restrictions on the possible layouts may be imposed. Among such restrictions, constraining the minimum length scales of different regions of the design has a significant place. Within the density filter based topology optimization framework the most commonly used definition is that a region has a minimum length scale not less than D if any point within that region lies within a sphere with diameter D > 0 that is completely contained in the region. In this paper, we propose a variant of this minimum length scale definition for subsets of a convex (possibly bounded) domain. We show that sets with positive minimum length scale are characterized as being morphologically open. As a corollary, we find that sets where both the interior and the exterior have positive minimum length scales are characterized as being simultaneously morphologically open and (essentially) morphologically closed. For binary designs in the discretized setting, the latter translates to that the opening of the design should equal the closing of the design. To demonstrate the capability of the developed theory, we devise a method that heuristically promotes designs that are binary and have positive minimum length scales (possibly measured in different norms) on both phases for minimum compliance problems. The obtained designs are almost binary and possess minimum length scales on both phases.