It is of great importance for the development of new products to find the best possible topology or layout for given design objectives and constraints at a very early stage of the design process (the conceptual and project definition phase). Thus, over the last decade, substantial efforts of fundamental research have been devoted to the development of efficient and reliable procedures for solution of such problems. During this period, the researchers have been mainly occupied with two different kinds of topology design processes; the Material or Microstructure Technique and the Geometrical or Macrostructure Technique. It is the objective of this review paper to present an overview of the developments within these two types of techniques with special emphasis on optimum topology and layout design of linearly elastic 2D and 3D continuum structures. Starting from the mathematical-physical concepts of topology and layout optimization, several methods are presented and the applicability is illustrated by a number of examples. New areas of application of topology optimization are discussed at the end of the article. This review article includes 425 references.

This paper discusses characteristic features and inherent difficulties pertaining to the lack of usual differentiability properties in problems "of sensitivity analysis and optimum structural design with respect to multiple eigenvaiues. Computational aspects are illustrated via a number of examples.Based on a mathematical perturbation technique, a general multiparameter framework is developed for computation of design sensitivities of simple as well as multiple eigenvalues of complex structures. The method is exemplified by computation of changes of simple and multiple natural transverse vibration frequencies subject to changes of different design parameters of finite element modelled, stiffener reinforced thin elastic plates.Problems of optimization are formulated as the maximization of the smallest (simple or multiple) eigenvalue subject to a global constraint of e.g. given total volume of material of the structure, and necessary optimality conditions are derived for an arbitrary degree of multiplicity of the smallest eigenvalue. The necessary optimality conditions express (i) linear dependence of a set of generalized gradient vectors of the multiple eigenvalue and the gradient vector of the constraint, and (ii) positive semi-definiteness of a matrix of the coefficients of the linear combination.It is shown in the paper that the optimality condition (i) can be directly applied for the development of an efficient, iterative numerical method for the optimization of structural eigenvalues of arbitrary multiplicity, and that the satisfaction of the necessary optimality conditioli (ii) can be readily checked when the method has converged. Application of the method is illustrated by simple, multiparameter examples of optimizing single and bimodal buckling loads of columns on elastic foundations.

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