Thermomechanical compliant actuator design using meshless topology optimization

A new topology optimization method for designing thermomechanical compliant actuators using meshless methods is presented. The meshless method is employed to discretize the design domain and the bulk density field, which can avoid the undesirable mesh distortion when the standard finite element method (FEM) is applied. The method for imposing boundary conditions in the meshless method is discussed in details. An interpolation scheme is applied to indicate the dependence of material mechanical and thermal properties on pseudo-densities which are distributed to the related integration points. Furthermore, the design sensitivity analysis is performed by incorporating the adjoint approach into the meshless method. The optimization problem is then solved by the method of moving asymptotes (MMA). The availability of the proposed method is demonstrated by using a widely studied compliant structure.