Failure of existing structures with semi-brittle mechanical properties on meso scale and reduction of computational cost using non-linear topology optimization

The current research proposes a novel technique to reduce the computational cost and memory usage of numerical modeling of existing structures with semi-brittle mechanical properties on a meso scale. Macro and Meso scales are utilized to investigate the behavior of existing structures. Therefore, rather than modeling the whole numerical sample on meso scale via non-linear topology optimization analysis, certain parts of the numerical model are modeled on meso scale, and the remaining are modeled on the macro scale. Accordingly, without reducing the accuracy of the numerical modeling results, computational complexity and memory use are decreased. In the paper, non-linear Topology optimization is developed using the Drucker-Prager yield criterion and added to the ANSYS finite element software as an extension. Finally, the application of this method is analyzed by proposing some examples.