Robust topology optimisation of lattice structures with spatially correlated uncertainties

The uncertainties in material and other properties of structures are often spatially correlated. We introduce an efficient technique for representing and processing spatially correlated random fields in robust topology optimisation of lattice structures. Robust optimisation takes into account the statistics of the structural response to obtain a design whose performance is less sensitive to the specific realisation of the random field. We represent Gaussian random fields on lattices by leveraging the established link between random fields and stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs). The precision matrix, i.e. the inverse of the covariance matrix, of a random field with Matérn covariance is equal to the finite element stiffness matrix of a possibly fractional PDE with a second-order elliptic operator. We consider the finite element discretisation of the PDE on the lattice to obtain a random field which, by design, takes into account its geometry and connectivity. The so-obtained random field can be interpreted as a physics-informed prior by the hypothesis that the elliptic PDE models the physical processes occurring during manufacturing, like heat and mass diffusion. Although the proposed approach is general, we demonstrate its application to lattices modelled as pin-jointed trusses with uncertainties in member Young’s moduli. We consider as a cost function the weighted sum of the expectation and standard deviation of the structural compliance. To compute the expectation and standard deviation and their gradients with respect to member cross-sections we use a first-order Taylor series approximation. The cost function and its gradient are computed using only sparse matrix operations. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach using several lattice examples with isotropic, anisotropic and non-stationary random fields and up to eighty thousand random and optimisation variables.