COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF ADVANCED STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION PARADIGMS FOR AEROSPACE LOAD-BEARING COMPONENTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55766/sujst11637Keywords:
Additive Manufacturing, Aerospace Engineering, Comparative Benchmarking, Computational Mechanics, Structural Design, Topology OptimizationAbstract
This study presents a systematic comparative evaluation of four structural optimization methods - Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP), Level Set, Mixable Density, and Shape optimization applied to aerospace components under standardized conditions. A helicopter pitch arm subjected to 1077 N loading derived from rigid body dynamics analysis served as the benchmark case. The investigation encompassed 36 optimization scenarios with weight reduction targets of 30-50%, stress constraints of 150-200 MPa, and a 3 mm minimum feature size for additive manufacturing. Level Set methods achieved 388.5 N·mm compliance compared to 412.7 N·mm for SIMP at 40% weight reduction, representing 6% superior stiffness at 3.75× computational cost. SIMP generated 8-12% intermediate densities requiring post-processing, while Level Set produced binary material distributions suitable for direct manufacturing. Stress constraints below 175 MPa activated in >25% of the design domain, forcing material redistribution that increased compliance by 18-25%. Manufacturing constraints significantly influenced performance: 3 mm features incurred 12% compliance penalty while 5 mm conventional machining constraints resulted in 38% penalty. The results establish that 35-45% weight reduction with 175-200 MPa stress limits represents the optimal parameter range for aerospace applications, providing quantitative guidance for method selection based on specific performance-cost requirements.
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