A Hybrid Level Set Optimization Design Method of Functionally Graded Cellular Structures Considering Connectivity

With the continuous advancement in topology optimization and additive manufacturing(AM)technology,the capability to fabricate functionally graded materials and intricate cellular structures with spatially varying microstructures has grown significantly.However,a critical challenge is encountered in the design of these structures–the absence of robust interface connections between adjacent microstructures,potentially resulting in diminished efficiency or macroscopic failure.A Hybrid Level Set Method(HLSM)is proposed,specifically designed to enhance connectivity among non-uniform microstructures,contributing to the design of functionally graded cellular structures.The HLSM introduces a pioneering algorithm for effectively blending heterogeneous microstructure interfaces.Initially,an interpolation algorithm is presented to construct transition microstructures seamlessly connected on both sides.Subsequently,the algorithm enables the morphing of non-uniform unit cells to seamlessly adapt to interconnected adjacent microstructures.The method,seamlessly integrated into a multi-scale topology optimization framework using the level set method,exhibits its efficacy through numerical examples,showcasing its prowess in optimizing 2D and 3D functionally graded materials(FGM)and multi-scale topology optimization.In essence,the pressing issue of interface connections in complex structure design is not only addressed but also a robust methodology is introduced,substantiated by numerical evidence,advancing optimization capabilities in the realm of functionally graded materials and cellular structures.

Fenlong Cultivation-the Fourth Set of Farming Methods Invented in China

The basic theory and effect of the new farming method of ＂Fenlong＂ cultivation which has been included in the main extension technology of Ministry of Agriculture of the People＇s Republic of China is fully illustrated for the first time, and it is the fourth set （generation） of farming modes and methods following manpower, animal and mechanical （tractor） farming. It follows the natural law to achieve soil activation, water saving, oxygen increase, warming and desalination through the active use of natural resources like soil, rainfall and solar energy, thereby promoting a new round of natural agricultural production and quality improvement and water con- servation, which has crop yield increase by 10%-30%, quality improvement of 5%, natural precipitation retaining increase by100%. The characteristics and mechanism are the use of spiral drill for one-time completion of the land preparation by drilling vertically to 30-50 cm of soil layer through high speed peeling. After instant high temperature and many fierce impacts, mechanical frictions, it could achieve the multiplication of the number of loose soil, soil physical modification and expansion of the soil nutrients, reservoirs, oxygen, microorganisms （＂Four pools＂）. Fenlong cultivation can give birth to new farming culture and civilization, and it can achieve the physical ＂desalinized＂ transformation and utilization of saline soil. The formation of Fenlong green farming technology system makes it possible to invent the farming tools of ＂serf-propelled Fenlong machinery＂ that has got the patent, and it is the method for farmland （dry land, paddy field） Fenlong cultivation, saline-alkali soil smash-ridging cultivation and for the abundance of grass ecology on degraded grassland. The application of Fenlong ＂4＋1＂ （arable, saline-alkali soil, grasslands, Sponge City＋rivers） green development in China can achieve the ＂double safety＂ of food and living space.

Topological and Shape Optimization of Flexure Hinges for Designing Compliant Mechanisms Using the Level Set Method

A flexure hinge is a major component in designing compliant mechanisms that o ers unique possibilities in a wide range of application fields in which high positioning accuracy is required. Although various flexure hinges with di erent configurations have been successively proposed, they are often designed based on designers' experiences and inspirations. This study presents a systematic method for topological optimization of flexure hinges by using the level set method. Optimization formulations are developed by considering the functional requirements and geometrical constraints of flexure hinges. The functional requirements are first constructed by maximizing the compliance in the desired direction while minimizing the compliances in the other directions. The weighting sum method is used to construct an objective function in which a self-adjust method is used to set the weighting factors. A constraint on the symmetry of the obtained configuration is developed. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The obtained results reveal that the design of a flexure hinge starting from the topology level can yield more choices for compliant mechanism design and obtain better designs that achieve higher performance.

A LEVEL SET METHOD FOR STRUCTURAL TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION WITH MULTI-CONSTRAINTS AND MULTI-MATERIALS

Combining the vector level set model,the shape sensitivity analysis theory with the gradient projection technique,a level set method for topology optimization with multi-constraints and multi-materials is presented in this paper.The method implicitly describes structural material in- terfaces by the vector level set and achieves the optimal shape and topology through the continuous evolution of the material interfaces in the structure.In order to increase computational efficiency for a fast convergence,an appropriate nonlinear speed mapping is established in the tangential space of the active constraints.Meanwhile,in order to overcome the numerical instability of general topology opti- mization problems,the regularization with the mean curvature flow is utilized to maintain the interface smoothness during the optimization process.The numerical examples demonstrate that the approach possesses a good flexibility in handling topological changes and gives an interface representation in a high fidelity,compared with other methods based on explicit boundary variations in the literature.

Level set method for numerical simulation of a cavitation bubble,its growth, collapse and rebound near a rigid wall

A level set method of non-uniform grids is used to simulate the whole evolution of a cavitation bubble, including its growth, collapse and rebound near a rigid wall. Single-phase Navier-Stokes equation in the liquid region is solved by MAC projection algorithm combined with second-order ENO scheme for the advection terms. The moving inter-face is captured by the level set function, and the interface velocity is resolved by ＂one-side＂ velocity extension from the liquid region to the bubble region, complementing the second-order weighted least squares method across the interface and projection inside bubble. The use of non-uniform grid overcomes the difficulty caused by the large computational domain and very small bubble size. The computation is very stable without suffering from large flow-field gradients, and the results are in good agreements with other studies. The bubble interface kinematics, dynamics and its effect on the wall are highlighted, which shows that the code can effectively capture the ＂shock wave＂-like pressure and velocity at jet impact, toroidal bubble, and complicated pressure structure with peak, plateau and valley in the later stage of bubble oscillating.

Simulation of Non-isothermal Injection Molding for a Non-Newtonian Fluid by Level Set Method

A non-isothermal injection molding process for a non-Newtonian viscous pseudoplastic fluid is simulated.A conservative interface capturing technique and the flow field solving method are coupled to perform a dynamic simulation.The validity of the numerical method is verified by a benchmark problem.The melt interface evolution versus time is captured and the physical quantities such as temperature,velocity and pressure at each time step are obtained with corresponding analysis.A"frozen skin"layer with the thickness increasing versus time during the injection process is found.The fact that the"frozen skin"layer can be reduced by increasing the injection velocity is numerically verified.The fountain flow phenomenon near the melt interface is also captured.Moreover,comparisons with the non-isothermal Newtonian case show that the curvatures of the interface arcs and the pressure contours near the horizontal mid-line of the cavity for the non-Newtonian pseudoplastic case is larger than that for the Newtonian case.The velocity profiles are different at different positions for the non-Newtonian pseudoplastic case,while in the case of Newtonian flow the velocity profiles are parabolic and almost the same at different positions.

Structural Topology Design of Container Ship Based on Knowledge-Based Engineering and Level Set Method

Knowledge-Based Engineering （KBE） is introduced into the ship structural design in this paper. From the implementation of KBE, the design solutions for both Rules Design Method （RDM） and Interpolation Design Method （IDM） are generated. The corresponding Finite Element （FE） models are generated. Topological design of the longitudinal structures is studied where the Gaussian Process （GP） is employed to build the surrogate model for FE analysis. Multi-objective optimization methods inspired by Pareto Front are used to reduce the design tank weight and outer surface area simultaneously. Additionally, an enhanced Level Set Method （LSM） which employs implicit algorithm is applied to the topological design of typical bracket plate which is used extensively in ship structures. Two different sets of boundary conditions are considered. The proposed methods show satisfactory efficiency and accuracy.

Fully implicational methods for approximate reasoning based on interval-valued fuzzy sets

The aim of this paper is to discuss the approximate rea- soning problems with interval-valued fuzzy environments based on the fully implicational idea. First, this paper constructs a class of interval-valued fuzzy implications by means of a type of impli- cations and a parameter on the unit interval, then uses them to establish fully implicational reasoning methods for interval-valued fuzzy modus ponens （IFMP） and interval-valued fuzzy modus tel- lens （IFMT） problems. At the same time the reversibility properties of these methods are analyzed and the reversible conditions are given. It is shown that the existing unified forms of α-triple I （the abbreviation of triple implications） methods for FMP and FMT can be seen as the particular cases of our methods for IFMP and IFMT.

LEVEL SET METHOD FOR TOPOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION APPLYING TO STRUCTURE, MECHANISM AND MATERIAL DESIGNS

Based on a level set model, a topology optimization method has been suggestedrecently. It uses a level set to express the moving structural boundary, which can flexibly handlecomplex topological changes. By combining vector level set models with gradient projectiontechnology, the level set method for topological optimization is extended to a topologicaloptimization problem with multi-constraints, multi-materials and multi-load cases. Meanwhile, anappropriate nonlinear speed, mapping is established in the tangential space of the activeconstraints for a fast convergence. Then the method is applied to structure designs, mechanism andmaterial designs by a number of benchmark examples. Finally, in order to further improvecomputational efficiency and overcome the difficulty that the level set method cannot generate newmaterial interfaces during the optimization process, the topological derivative analysis isincorporated into the level set method for topological optimization, and a topological derivativeand level set algorithm for topological optimization is proposed.

A Simple Weighted Integration Method for Calculating Surface Tension Force to Suppress Parasitic Flow in the Level Set Approach

Parasitic flows may occur in the numerical simulation of incompressible multiphase flow due to errors in the calculation of surface tension terms, specifically for the curvature and unit normal vector. An improved method for calculating the surface tension based on the level set approach is proposed, in which the contribution of not only the center node but also the rest area of a control volume to the calculation of surface tension is considered in a balanced manner. The weighted integration method (WIM) is more consistent with the concept of a banded interface in the level set method. It is applied to the temporal evolution of a two-dimensional neutrally buoyant liquid drop and a buoyancy driven deformable bubble in an immiscible fluid for the validation of WIM. The results show that the parasitic flows are evidently suppressed by the weighted integration method. The weight factors for WIM in 3-D cases are also suggested.

Numerical simulation of single bubble rising in shear-thinning fluids by level set method

The behavior of single bubble rising in quiescent shear-thinning tlmds was lnvestlgateO numerically by level set metnoa. number of bubbles in a large range of Reynolds number and Eotvos number were investigated including spherical, oblate and spherical. The bubble shape and drag coefficient were compared with experimental results. It is observed that the simulated results show good conformity to experimental results over a wide range of Reynolds number. In addition, the detailed flow field based on the reference coordinate system moving with the bubble is obtained, and the relationship among flow field, bubble shape and velocity is discussed.

A Simple Weighted Integration Method for Calculating Surface Tension Force to Suppress Parasitic Flow in the Level Set Approach

Parasitic flows may occur in the numerical simulation of incompressible multiphase flow due to errors in the calculation of surface tension terms, specifically for the curvature and unit normal vector. An improved method for calculating the surface tension based on the level set approach is proposed, in which the contribution of not only the center node but also the rest area of a control volume to the calculation of surface tension is considered in a balanced manner. The weighted integration method (WIM) is more consistent with the concept of a banded in- terface in the level set method. It is applied to the temporal evolution of a two-dimensional neutrally buoyant liquid drop and a buoyancy driven deformable bubble in an immiscible fluid for the validation of WIM. The results show that the parasitic flows are evidently suppressed by the weighted integration method. The weight factors for WIM in 3-D cases are also suggested.

New normalized nonlocal hybrid level set method for image segmentation

This article introduces a new normalized nonlocal hybrid level set method for image segmentation.Due to intensity overlapping,blurred edges with complex backgrounds,simple intensity and texture information,such kind of image segmentation is still a challenging task.The proposed method uses both the region and boundary information to achieve accurate segmentation results.The region information can help to identify rough region of interest and prevent the boundary leakage problem.It makes use of normalized nonlocal comparisons between pairs of patches in each region,and a heuristic intensity model is proposed to suppress irrelevant strong edges and constrain the segmentation.The boundary information can help to detect the precise location of the target object,it makes use of the geodesic active contour model to obtain the target boundary.The corresponding variational segmentation problem is implemented by a level set formulation.We use an internal energy term for geometric active contours to penalize the deviation of the level set function from a signed distance function.At last,experimental results on synthetic images and real images are shown in the paper with promising results.

The shape optimization of the arterial graft design by level set methods

The goal of the arterial graft design problem is to find an optimal graft built on an occluded artery, which can be mathematically modeled by a fluid based shape optimization problem. The smoothness of the graft is one of the important aspects in the arterial graft design problem since it affects the flow of the blood significantly. As an attractive design tool for this problem, level set methods are quite efficient for obtaining better shape of the graft. In this paper, a cubic spline level set method and a radial basis function level set method are designed to solve the arterial graft design problem. In both approaches, the shape of the arterial graft is implicitly tracked by the zero-level contour of a level set function and a high level of smoothness of the graft is achieved. Numerical results show the efficiency of the algorithms in the arterial graft design.

A LEVEL SET METHOD FOR MICROSTRUCTURE DESIGN OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Based on a level set model and the homogenization theory, an optimization al- gorithm for ?nding the optimal con?guration of the microstructure with speci?ed properties is proposed, which extends current research on the level set method for structure topology opti- mization. The method proposed employs a level set model to implicitly describe the material interfaces of the microstructure and a Hamilton-Jacobi equation to continuously evolve the ma- terial interfaces until an optimal design is achieved. Meanwhile, the moving velocities of level set are obtained by conducting sensitivity analysis and gradient projection. Besides, how to handle the violated constraints is also discussed in the level set method for topological optimization, and a return-mapping algorithm is constructed. Numerical examples show that the method exhibits outstanding ?exibility of handling topological changes and ?delity of material interface represen- tation as compared with other conventional methods in literatures.

An explicit finite volume element method for solving characteristic level set equation on triangular grids

Level set methods are widely used for predicting evolutions of complex free surface topologies,such as the crystal and crack growth,bubbles and droplets deformation,spilling and breaking waves,and two-phase flow phenomena.This paper presents a characteristic level set equation which is derived from the two-dimensional level set equation by using the characteristic-based scheme.An explicit finite volume element method is developed to discretize the equation on triangular grids.Several examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method for calculating interface evolutions in time.The proposed level set method is also coupled with the Navier-Stokes equations for two-phase immiscible incompressible flow analysis with surface tension.The Rayleigh-Taylor instability problem is used to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

New Image Recognition Method Based on Rough-Sets and Fuzzy Theory

A new image recognition method based on fuzzy rough sets theory is proposed, and its implementation discussed. The performance of this method as applied to ferrography image recognition is evaluated. It is shown that the new method gives better results than fuzzy or rough sets method when used alone.

3D Multiphase Piecewise Constant Level Set Method Based on Graph Cut Minimization

Segmentation of three-dimensional(3D) complicated structures is of great importance for many real applications.In this work we combine graph cut minimization method with a variant of the level set idea for 3D segmentation based on the Mumford-Shah model.Compared with the traditional approach for solving the Euler-Lagrange equation we do not need to solve any partial differential equations.Instead,the minimum cut on a special designed graph need to be computed.The method is tested on data with complicated structures.It is rather stable with respect to initial value and the algorithm is nearly parameter free.Experiments show that it can solve large problems much faster than traditional approaches.

Homotopy Continuous Method for Weak Efficient Solution of Multiobjective Optimization Problem with Feasible Set Unbounded Condition

In this paper, we propose a homotopy continuous method (HCM) for solving a weak efficient solution of multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) with feasible set unbounded condition, which is arising in Economical Distributions, Engineering Decisions, Resource Allocations and other field of mathematical economics and engineering problems. Under the suitable assumption, it is proved to globally converge to a weak efficient solution of (MOP), if its x-branch has no weak infinite solution.

Predefined Exponential Basis Set for Half-Bounded Multi Domain Spectral Method

A non-orthogonal predefined exponential basis set is used to handle half-bounded domains in multi domain spectral method (MDSM). This approach works extremely well for real-valued semi-infinite differential problems. It spans simultaneously wide range of exponential decay rates with multi scaling and does not suffer from zero crossing. These two conditions are necessary for many physical problems. For comparison, the method is used to solve different problems and compared with analytical and published results. The comparison exhibits the strengths and accuracy of the presented basis set.