Multi‐domain topology optimization with ant colony systems

• Lucas S. Batista ^[1] ; Felipe Campelo ^[1] ; Frederico G. Guimaraes ^[1] ; Jaime A. Ramírez ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Brasil

     
• Localización: Compel: International journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, ISSN 0332-1649, Vol. 30, Nº 6 (Special Issue: Advances in Computational Electromagnetics), 2011, págs. 1792-1803
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a graph representation of the design space that is suitable for the ant colony optimization (ACO) method in topology optimization (TO) problems.

    Design/methodology/approach – The ACO is employed to obtain optimal routes in an equivalent graph representation of the discretized design space, with each route corresponding to a given distribution of material.

    Findings – The problem associated with the maximization of the torque of a c‐core magnetic actuator is investigated, in which part of the yoke is discretized into a 16×8 grid and can assume three different materials: air, pure iron and a magnetic material.

    Research limitations/implications – The results of the c‐core magnetic actuator problem, which are in agreement with literature available, show the adequacy of the proposed approach to TO of electromagnetic devices.

    Practical implications – The graph representation of the design space permits the solution of topological design problems with an arbitrary number of materials.

    Originality/value – The results illustrate the potential of the methodology in dealing with multi‐domain TO problems, and the possibility to extend the application to 3D problems.