Singularity aware de-homogenization for high-resolution topology optimized structures

Homogenization-based topology optimization has been shown to be effective but does not directly create mechanical structures. Instead, the method gives a multi-scale description of the optimized design, e.g., lamination thicknesses and directions. To obtain a realizable single-scale design, one can perform a subsequent de-homogenization step.

This is done by converting the lamination directions to integrable vector fields from which it is possible to compute a parameterization of the domain. Unfortunately, however, singularities often make it impossible to find integrable vector fields that align with lamination directions. We present a short introduction to homogenization-based topology optimization followed by an overview of different types of singularities and how they impinge on the problem.

Based on this, we propose a singularity aware de-homogenization pipeline, where we use a method for vector field combing which produces consistent labeling of the lamination directions but also introduces necessary seams in the domain. We demonstrate how methods from computer graphics can subsequently be used to compute the final parameterization from which the mechanical structure can easily be extracted.

We demonstrate the method on several test cases.