First paper submitted

Finally my first paper is submitted! :)

I want to thank my co-authors (there are a lot of them) a lot for their help and patience (there are a lot of them). There is a preprint available:

Topology Optimization of Piezoelectric Layers Using the SIMP Method

To be honest, I'm not sure how to judge this paper. It contains no breathtaking new method but a detailed mathematical description of the model (thanks to both of the Kaltenbachers). I like the idea to follow the adjoint method approach in the weak formulation to answer the question of the boundary conditions for the adjoint equation. Clearly there might be other approaches but in the papers I read no word is spent about that issue.

From an engineering point of view, I think the result is quite interesting. It suggests practical designs for real world applications. And indeed, optimization helps to understand our models/ devices better. At least my colleagues who are really deep into the piezoelectric bussiness are interested. :)

This work took us about four month! Without it, I might be much further in the dynamic optimization - but on the other side writing your stuff down really helps. I found an important bug and it clarified some issues (e.g. excitation only via voltage =inhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition) instead of electric charges or other stuff.

And while most papers (especially the dutch ones) are really impressive - some others actually tell a lot of nonsense. Compared to them mine might really be worth to be published. :)

I cover only the static case in the paper. Since a couple of weeks I do harmonic optimization. In september I'll be at the OIPE 2008 in Ilmenau (the father of MP3 is a prof there). I have to write a paper and hopefully I have some interesting new (dynamic) results then.