Full-Scale Isogeometric Topology Optimization of Cellular Structures Based on Kirchhoff-Love Shells

Cellular thin-shell structures are widely applied in ultralightweight designs due to their high bearing capacity and strength-to-weight ratio. In this paper, a full-scale isogeometric topology optimization (ITO) method based on Kirchhoff-Love shells for designing cellular tshin-shell structures with excellent damage tolerance ability is proposed. This method utilizes high-order continuous nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) as basis functions for Kirchhoff-Love shell elements. The geometric and analysis models of thin shells are unified by isogeometric analysis (IGA) to avoid geometric approximation error and improve computational accuracy. The topological configurations of thin-shell structures are described by constructing the effective density field on the control mesh. Local volume constraints are imposed in the proximity of each control point to obtain bone-like cellular structures. To facilitate numerical implementation, the p-norm function is used to aggregate local volume constraints into an equivalent global constraint. Several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. After simulation and comparative analysis, the results indicate that the cellular thin-shell structures optimized by the proposed method exhibit great load-carrying behavior and high damage robustness.