The objective of a bridge design is to produce a safe bridge that is elegant and satisfies all functionality requirements, at a cost that is acceptable to the owner. A successful bridge design must be natural, simple,...The objective of a bridge design is to produce a safe bridge that is elegant and satisfies all functionality requirements, at a cost that is acceptable to the owner. A successful bridge design must be natural, simple, original, and harmonious with its surroundings. Aesthetics is not an additional consideration in the design of a bridge, but is rather an integral part of bridge design. Both the structural configuration and the aesthetics of a bridge must be considered together during the conceptual design stage. To achieve such a task, the bridge design engineer must have a good understanding of structural theory and bridge aesthetics.展开更多
Topology optimization is a powerful design approach that is used to determine the optimal topology in order to obtain the desired functional performance. It has been widely used to improve structural performance in en...Topology optimization is a powerful design approach that is used to determine the optimal topology in order to obtain the desired functional performance. It has been widely used to improve structural performance in engineering fields such as in the aerospace and automobile industries. However, some gaps still exist between topology optimization and engineering application, which significantly hinder the applica- tion of topology optimization. One of these gaps is how to interpret topology results, especially those obtained using the density framework, into parametric computer-aided design (CAD) models that are ready for subsequent shape optimization and manufacturing. In this paper, a new method for interpreting topology optimization results into stereolithography (STL) models and parametric CAD models is pro- posed. First, we extract the skeleton of the topology optimization result in order to ensure shape preser- vation and use a filtering method to ensure characteristics preservation. After this process, the distribution of the nodes in the boundary of the topology optimization result is denser, which will benefit the subsequent curve fitting. Using the curvature and the derivative of curvature of the uniform B-spline curve, an adaptive B-spline fitting method is proposed in order to obtain a parametric CAD model with the fewest control points meeting the requirement of the fitting error. A case study is presented to pro- vide a detailed description of the proposed method, and two more examples are shown to demonstrate the validity and versatility of the proposed method.展开更多
文摘The objective of a bridge design is to produce a safe bridge that is elegant and satisfies all functionality requirements, at a cost that is acceptable to the owner. A successful bridge design must be natural, simple, original, and harmonious with its surroundings. Aesthetics is not an additional consideration in the design of a bridge, but is rather an integral part of bridge design. Both the structural configuration and the aesthetics of a bridge must be considered together during the conceptual design stage. To achieve such a task, the bridge design engineer must have a good understanding of structural theory and bridge aesthetics.
文摘Topology optimization is a powerful design approach that is used to determine the optimal topology in order to obtain the desired functional performance. It has been widely used to improve structural performance in engineering fields such as in the aerospace and automobile industries. However, some gaps still exist between topology optimization and engineering application, which significantly hinder the applica- tion of topology optimization. One of these gaps is how to interpret topology results, especially those obtained using the density framework, into parametric computer-aided design (CAD) models that are ready for subsequent shape optimization and manufacturing. In this paper, a new method for interpreting topology optimization results into stereolithography (STL) models and parametric CAD models is pro- posed. First, we extract the skeleton of the topology optimization result in order to ensure shape preser- vation and use a filtering method to ensure characteristics preservation. After this process, the distribution of the nodes in the boundary of the topology optimization result is denser, which will benefit the subsequent curve fitting. Using the curvature and the derivative of curvature of the uniform B-spline curve, an adaptive B-spline fitting method is proposed in order to obtain a parametric CAD model with the fewest control points meeting the requirement of the fitting error. A case study is presented to pro- vide a detailed description of the proposed method, and two more examples are shown to demonstrate the validity and versatility of the proposed method.