Topology optimization

[Chris0864]

Hello everyone,
is it possibile to do an topology optimization with pymapdl? Do you have an example code?
I searched in the docs, but found nothing about it.
Greetings Chris

[germa89]

Hi @Chris0864

Currently there is no examples on topology optimization. Sorry about it.

On PyMAPDL, we are always welcoming any example. So if you ever develop on, we will happily include it in our documentation if you wish. If you have one example in MAPDL, we could find the time to translate it to PyMAPDL.

[mikerife]

Hi @Chris0864 & @germa89 The Topology Optimization capability in Workbench is it's own program; so it works hand-in-hand with WB Mechanical (using MAPDL as a solver) to perform the topological optimization. I looked into the inner workings a while ago to see if I could manually submit a TO job. If I remember correctly there is either a TO input file that controls MAPDL or the other way around depending on the state of the analysis systems in Workbench. Let me look into that again and see if I can make anything from that.

An alternative would be to use some Python module to supply the TO logic. I'm on a small team (non developers) that have been trying to come up with some examples and we do have a optimization model...but it's not quite working yet. And are still in the troubleshooting stage.

Is there a specific type of TO you are looking for? Here is the help link to the WB TO section to give you an idea of what it offers.

https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v222/en/wb_sim/ds_topo_opt_overview.html

Mike

[germa89]

I'm happy to provide developer support for this. :)

[Chris0864]

Thanks a lot. No in the moment there is no specific type.

[Chris0864]

For my usecase a simp TO would be nice. Do you have an idea or code how i can adress the TO job of ansys manually?

[germa89]

I have nothing. But I guess we should start by defining a simple model and set some parameter to optimize.