Abstract

Evolutionary structural optimization (ESO) is a method combining topology and shape optimization. Although ESO has appeared on a simple foundation, many researchers up to now have made many contributions and performance based optimization, which incorporates performance indices to decide the best topology through all the designs provided by the optimization process, has been presented. Some criterions that reflect the structural behavior have been included in these procedures, however, all the former indices developed, take just one of these criterions into consideration such as stress, strain energy, displacement, etc. This paper presents a new performance index formulation, which is used to select the optimum design from the optimization process by considering the fully stressed design concept as the most affective criterion and deals with the previously mentioned problem by reviewing earlier studies. The efficiency and capability of the new index are demonstrated by several design examples.

Key words: Topology optimization, evolutionary method, performance index, fully stressed design.