📅 Wednesday, May 7, 2025

🕑 3 pm (CET)

📍 OCZ Conference Room, C1 Building, 1st floor (CIMNE), UPC Campus Nord

Online streaming

ABSTRACT

Topology optimization has become a key element in achieving efficient and lightweight structural designs. Besides, the use of topological derivatives within level-set frameworks has proven to be highly effective, especially when considering fix-point iterations, such as the Slerp algorithm. In this context, only the Augmented Lagrangian optimizer has been considered in the last years to solve the global problem, requiring extensive parameter tuning and showing a slow rate of convergence.

Consequently, a fundamental aspect in topology optimization is to use a robust global optimization scheme, able to handle any design variable just using intuitive parameters. Recently, the novel Null Space optimizer has exhibited solid performance when considering density and shape optimization.

In this study, we extend the Null Space approach to also consider topological derivatives for level-set methods. Through a series of case studies, we show that this extension with Slerp offers a stable, efficient and robust alternative for complex structural design problems.

SPEAKER CV

Jose Antonio Torres is a PhD Student at the Composites and Advanced Materials for Multifunctional Structures group, from CIMNE. He graduated from the Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Technologies Engineering (UPC-ESEIAAT) in 2020, and later from the Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering (UPC- ESEIAAT) in 2022. Then, he was awarded a Joan Oró predoctoral scholarship to begin his PhD, and he is currently in his fourth year of the program. Focusing in topology optimization, his research aims to develop new efficient approaches to consider local manufacturing and stress constraints. In the presence of numerous constraints, a robust global optimization strategy becomes necessary, particularly with respect to parameter tuning and the type of design variables involved. His doctoral thesis is supervised by Dr. Alex Ferrer and Dr. Fermín Otero.