Thursday 15 March 2007

Maximizing the compliance

I was wondering what would happen if I maximize the compliance - in other words to minimize stiffness. Note that the compliance is defined as the scalar product of force (externaly applied in the center of this bridge) and the displacement. <f, u>. When minimizing compliance I mininimize the mechanical energy which is <u, Ku> what is equivalent. Here the first formulation is more interesting, as our force is applied in the example only at a single node. The simulation is done with IPOPT as optimizer, the animation shows, that in a first attempt IPOPT weakens the material at the fix points - but removing the material at the load point allows clearly the highest displacement at this single load point.

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