WIT Press


Shape Optimal Design Using Inverse Variational Principles

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

40

Pages

10

Published

1999

Size

918 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/OP990011

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

P. Prochazka

Abstract

At present, the optimal shape design of structures is of great importance. Problems of this type mostly lead to very complicated nonlinear systems, and therefore new optimization solutions are being sought. One very efficient tool offers inverse variational principles. It starts with formulation of a variational principle under the assumption that the volume (in the 2D area) of the domain variables is constant. It can easily be shown that then the boundary density of potential energy in the optimal state should be constant too. As the differences of the density of the energy at the boundary nodal points may be very large, the new positions of the boundary nodal points are determined in a special scale. Since inverse variational principles, in connection with the boundary elemen

Keywords