2021 Volume 2021 Pages 20210005
In this study, we propose a topology optimization method for unsteady heat conduction problems. To consider the historical dependence of the temperature field in unsteady heat conduction problems in the sensitivity analysis, we apply the Discretize then differential approach, which is the most versatile and can calculate the sensitivity with high accuracy regardless of analysis conditions, and formulate the sensitivity in detail. Also, to derive a structure that can be controlled to an arbitrary temperature distribution while ensuring the thermal conductivity, an objective function based on a weighted sum function of the thermal compliance and the squared error from target temperature is newly defined. The formulated sensitivity is validated through accuracy verification using the finite difference method as a benchmark. Finally, the validity of the proposed method is verified by showing several examples of optimization results.
