Application Brief

ANSYS Topology Optimization Upgrades Designs

to Take Full Advantage of 3-D Printing

Most design projects begin with a basic idea of the what the design should look like. The de-
sign is typically optimized by making incremental changes, such as adjusting the size or thick-
ness of features to optimize characteristics like strength, weight, size and manufacturing cost.
Product designers usually don’t even consider starting with a blank sheet of paper because
of the impracticability of manufacturing random shapes and the time and cost that would be
required to totally rethink the design. The innovation of 3-D printing has changed the design
landscape by making it possible to build virtually any shape without regard for design for
manufacturability rules. Now ANSYS provides designers with the tool they need to take full
advantage of these capabilities — automated topology optimization integrated with its full
suite of multiphysics software. The new ANSYS topology optimizer dramatically reduces the
engineering cost and lead time required to design a new generation of parts or products that
are optimized to reduce weight and manufacturing cost while delivering the same perfor-
mance as the current generation.

Challenge
Traditional manufacturing methods impose stringent design
for manufacturability and assembly constraints. For example,
manufacturability rules for molding typically include the need for draft
angles to enable ejection of the part, uniform wall thickness to minimize
warpage, radiused corners to improve plastic flow during molding, etc.
Three-dimensional printing eliminates these and other restrictions for
plastic and metal parts, making it economically feasible to build complex
structures that provide higher performance-to-weight and performance-to-
cost ratios than can be achieved with conventional manufacturing methods.
The design freedom offered by additive manufacturing opens an infinite
array of product designs for potential exploration. Taking advantage of this
freedom requires overturning conventional wisdom and force of habit by
daring to design products based on entirely new paradigms. Traditional
simulation methods, in which designs are explored one at a time by
manually defining their geometry, or dozens at a time by parametrically
varying their dimensions, are not up to the task of exploring a potentially
unlimited design space.

Solution
Topology optimization is well-suited to fully exploit the design freedom
provided by additive manufacturing by starting from blank space and
iterating to an optimized design while changing both the basic shape and
dimensions of the part. Topology optimization violates common rules of
thumb, such as maintaining uniform thickness, round holes, uniformly
spaced features, etc., in order to minimize the weight and cost of the part
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 ANSYS Topology Optimization Upgrades Designs
to Take Full Advantage of 3-D Printing

while meeting the objectives specified by the design engineer or analyst.

Topology optimization is not a new technology, but companies interested
in taking advantage of it have up to now faced several obstacles. Topology
optimizers have largely been stand-alone solutions that use relatively
basic solvers, limiting the accuracy of the optimized design. Today’s
topology optimizers require learning a new simulation environment and
converting the optimized design back into another simulation environment
for validation and simulation with respect to other physics such as flow,
vibration, nonlinear effects, heat and electromagnetic radiation. Topology
optimization often requires many solver runs, and the stand-alone solvers
used by these tools are often not very efficient at utilizing computing
resources, resulting in long solution times. Finally, the intricate geometries
that usually result from the topological optimization process can often be
very difficult to manipulate using conventional parametric modeling tools.

The new ANSYS topology optimizer overcomes these limitations through its
integration with ANSYS Mechanical and the ANSYS Workbench multiphysics
simulation environment. Topological optimization is performed with the
industry-leading ANSYS Mechanical solver, which provides a complete set
of element behavior, material models and equation solvers for nearly any
mechanical design problem. Design engineers and analysts can perform
topology optimization in an environment they already know and perform
multiphysics simulations such as thermal, nonlinear, fluids, vibration, and
electromagnetic without having to translate their geometry. Like other
topology optimizers, the ANSYS solution only optimizes the shape of the
part with respect to structural loading. However, since ANSYS technology
was designed from the ground up for multiphysics, the potential exists
in the future for complete multiphysics optimization. ANSYS technology
enables highly scalable HPC deployment, providing virtually unlimited
capacity for high-fidelity topological optimization. Lastly, the ANSYS
SpaceClaim Direct Modeler makes it easy to work with the complex models
that often result from topology optimization, enabling users to create and
modify any portion of the design simply by pushing, pulling and rotating
faces while nearby geometry adjusts in real time.

The first step in performing topology optimization is to understand the load

environment and the design objectives. The user then defines the starting
geometry to the full extent of the envelope that limits the outer boundaries
of the part. Any features that must be present on the part, such as mounting
surfaces, are then defined. The last step is defining the objectives of the
optimization. This could be, for example, to minimize the weight of the part
while holding stress and deflection within specified values. After the solver
returns the optimized geometry, the design engineer or analyst typically
opens the geometry in ANSYS SpaceClaim and performs any needed
modification and simplification without having to be concerned with
parametric constraints.

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 ANSYS Topology Optimization Upgrades Designs
to Take Full Advantage of 3-D Printing

Original design going through topology optimization

Summary
ANSYS topology optimization empowers designers and analysts to take
full advantage of the capabilities offered by 3-D printing by optimizing
the design of parts and products without regard for the constraints
imposed by conventional manufacturing processes or previous practice.
The new simulation technology makes it possible to reduce weight and
manufacturing costs while ensuring that parts and products deliver the
same level of structural performance as the previous generation. Topology
optimization reduces the time and expense of the product design process
by automating the process of exhaustively exploring the complete
geometrical design space and iterating to the design that best meets
the specified objectives. Design engineers may also be able to improve
the performance of parts by using topology optimization to eliminate
a resonant frequency that could not be removed using conventional
design methods. Simply reducing the weight of a part may improve the
performance of the product. For example, lightweighting a rocker arm can
often increase engine performance.

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