LAUSR

Abstract A level-set based topological optimization approach is proposed using boundary element method (BEM) to solve two-dimensional(2D) thermal problems. The objective function is considered as a function of temperature and thermal flux defined on boundaries with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. The topological sensitivity is derived combining BEM under the assumption of insulating topological boundaries generated during optimization. Smooth boundaries represented by the level-set function is updated using topological sensitivity with a regularization term. Numerical examples with different objective functions considering the real-world problems are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The topological sensitivity, computational time and boundary smoothness are verified by comparing with finite difference method (FDM).