Abstract
Historically, fluidic devices such as switches, amplifiers, and oscillators, have an advantage, compared with electronic devices, in terms of maintenance-free operation and operating life. Therefore, prior to the great progress in electronic technologies that has occurred during the past several decades, the structure and function of fluidic devices were the subject of extensive research. Recently, fluidic devices are again attracting significant attention, stimulated by progress in the development of MEMS technologies. In this study, to develop an energy-efficient structure for a MEMS-scale fluidic device, we apply a topology optimization method to an optimal design problem for a steady-state incompressible viscous flow field. We use a level set-based topology optimization method incorporating the concept of the phase field method for the topology optimization so that clear boundaries between the solid and fluid domains are expressed in the optimal configurations. To generalize the topology optimization problem for a fluid regime, generalized expressions of the primary and adjoint problems were formulated concretely, to minimize viscous energy dissipation under an outflow rate inequality constraint. Two numerical examples, for pipe bend flow and three-terminal flow, are provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed level set-based topology optimization method.
