LAUSR

Summary With the fast development of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology, topology optimization involving multiple materials has received ever increasing attention. Traditionally, this kind of optimization problem is solved within the implicit solution framework using the SIMP (Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization) or level set method. This treatment, however, will inevitably lead to a large number of design variables especially when many types of materials are involved and three-dimensional (3D) problems are considered. This is due to the fact that for each type of material, a corresponding density field/level function defined on the entire design domain must be introduced to describe its distribution. In the present paper, a novel approach for topology optimization with multiple materials is established based on the Moving Morphable Component (MMC) framework. With use of this approach, topology optimization problems with multiple materials can be solved with much less numbers of design variables and degrees of freedom. Numerical examples provided demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.