Abstract
The ongoing advancement of computer technology is reducing the time required to make the complex calculations that structural analysis or structural optimization require. However, structural optimization, by its nature, is an iterative process, and lengthy computation time is hard to avoid. Computational demands also make it difficult to apply structural optimization to the design of large-scale mechanical products. Furthermore, in practical design projects, several design teams usually design a variety of parts or modules independently and simultaneously. This further compounds the difficulty of executing structural optimization, because an initial structural optimization model must contain all parts and modules of the mechanical product. To resolve such problems, this paper proposes a hierarchical structural optimization method for mechanical structures. By manipulating the boundary conditions, this method enables structural optimization using only one part or module. This reduces the computation time and facilitates the structural optimization of practical design projects.
