OPTIMAL TOPOLOGIES OF STRUCTURES - HOMOGENIZATION, PSEUDO-ELASTIC APPROXIMATION AND THE BUBBLE-METHOD

Presents a pseudo-elastic approach to topological optimization. In com parison with the well-known homogenization method for topological opti mization it is not based on a micro-cellular structure, but approximat es the elastic properties directly. A characteristic difficulty of the se methods is the birth of new inner boundaries: thinning out the mate rial can be interpreted as reducing the density of a composite micro-s tructure, but eventually this process can result in a bubble with zero -density. Therefore, the bubble-method is a valuable asset to topologi cal optimization, which helps to overcome this difficulty.