Three-dimensional layout design of steel-concrete composite structures using topology optimization

For generating a more reasonable initial layout configuration, a three-dimensional topology optimization methodology of the steel-concrete composite structure is presented. Following Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) approach, an artificial material model with penalization for elastic constants is assumed and elemental density variables are used for describing the structural layout. The considered problem is thus formulated as to find the optimal material density distribution that minimizes the material volume under specified displacement constraints. By using the adjoint variable method for the sensitivity analysis, the optimization problem is efficiently solved by the gradient-based optimization algorithm. Numerical result shows that the proposed topology approach presented a novel structural topology of the simply-supported steel-concrete composite beam.