Convergence of shape optimization calculations of mechanical components using adaptive biological growth and iterative finite element methods

Shape optimization of mechanical components is one of the issues that have been considered in recent years. Different methods were presented such as adaptive biological for reducing costs and increasing accuracy. The effects of step factor, the number of control points and the definition way of control points coordinates in convergence rate were studied. A code was written using ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) which receives the studied parameters as input and obtains the optimum shape for the components. The results show that for achieving successful optimization, step factor should be in a specific range. It is found that the use of any coordinate system in defining control points coordinates and selection of any direction for stimulus vector of algorithm will also result in optimum shape. Furthermore, by increasing the number of control points, some non-uniformities are created in the studied boundary. Achieving acceptable accuracy seems impossible due to the creation of saw form at the studied boundary which is called “saw position”.