Isogeometric Topology Optimization of Frictional Contact Problems with a Density-Driven Contact Model
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Topology optimization serves as a powerful conceptual design tool by seeking the optimal material distribution within a design domain. Incorporating frictional contact into topology optimization is essential for designing high-performance structures that can effectively exploit tangential frictional forces for enhanced stiffness and stability. Traditional finite element methods are commonly employed to perform topology optimization involving frictional contact. However, finite element discretization compromises contact interface continuity, impairing computational efficiency and accuracy. Moreover, in SIMP-based frameworks, topology evolution generates non-physical "spurious contact" in low-density regions, causing Newton-Raphson divergence and optimization failure[1, 2]. To address these challenges, this work develops a density-driven isogeometric analysis framework for frictional contact topology optimization. The higher-order continuity of NURBS basis functions is leveraged to construct geometrically smooth contact interfaces, offering the advantages of high accuracy and fast convergence speed[3, 4]. In this framework, the normal and tangential contact constraints are imposed via the classical penalty method. To further resolve the numerical instability induced by topology evolution, a density-driven contact model is proposed. This model establishes a functional relationship between contact virtual work and material density through a penalization interpolation mechanism, ensuring that contact interactions naturally decay as density decreases. Furthermore, a discrete adjoint sensitivity analysis is derived to handle the path-dependent nature of frictional contact. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through numerical examples ranging from single-domain structures to multi-domain and multi-body contact problems. The results demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits superior numerical stability and successfully captures the influence of frictional effects on the optimized topological configurations.
