2023/03/27 by Sebastian Blauth, Blauth, Sebastian, Kevin Sturm +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Numerical Analysis Techniques #FOS: Mathematics #Metaheuristic Optimization Algorithms Research #Optimization and Control (math.OC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2303.15070
openalex publication_date 2023/03/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The ability to efficiently solve topology optimization problems is of great importance for many practical applications. Hence, there is a demand for efficient solution algorithms. In this paper, we propose novel quasi-Newton methods for solving PDE-constrained topology optimization problems. Our approach is based on and extends the popular solution algorithm of Amstutz and Andrä (A new algorithm for topology optimization using a level-set method, Journal of Computational Physics, 216, 2006). To do so, we introduce a new perspective on the commonly used evolution equation for the level-set method, which allows us to derive our quasi-Newton methods for topology optimization. We investigate the performance of the proposed methods numerically for the following examples: Inverse topology optimization problems constrained by linear and semilinear elliptic Poisson problems, compliance minimization in linear elasticity, and the optimization of fluids in Navier-Stokes flow, where we compare them to current state-of-the-art methods. Our results show that the proposed solution algorithms significantly outperform the other considered methods: They require substantially less iterations to find a optimizer while demanding only slightly more resources per iteration. This shows that our proposed methods are highly attractive solution methods in the field of topology optimization.