Yield limited optimal topology design of elastoplastic structures

This study is devoted to a novel method for topology optimization of elastoplastic structures subjected to stress constraints. It should be noted that in spite of the classical solutions of the different type of elastoplastic topology problems are more than 70 years old, the integration of the Prandtl-Reuss constitutive equations into the topology optimization process is not very often investigated in the last three decades. In the presented methodology where the classical variational principles of plasticity and the functor-oriented programming technique are applied in topology design, the aim is to find a minimum weight structure which is able to carry a given load, fulfills the allowable stress limit, and is made of a linearly elastic, perfectly plastic material. The optimal structure is found in an iterative way using only a stress intensity distribution and a return mapping algorithm. The method determines representative stresses at every Gaussian point, averages them inside every finite element using the von Mises yield criterion, and removes material proportionally to the stress intensities in individual finite elements. The procedure is repeated until the limit load capacity is exceeded under a given loading. The effectiveness of the methodology is illustrated with three numerical examples. Additionally, different topologies are presented for a purely elastic and an elastoplastic material, respectively. It is also demonstrated that the proposed method is able to find the optimal elastoplastic topology for a problem with a computational mesh of the order of tens of thousands of finite elements.