• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.1129-1136
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• 2010

Damper springs in a drive-line absorb the impulsive torque generated when a lock-up clutch is connected directly, instead of via a fluid coupling. Design optimization and finite element analysis were performed to improve the shock- and vibration-absorption capacity of the lock-up clutch. For this purpose, a multi-body dynamics model was developed by including the main parts of a vehicle, such as an engine with a clutch, a transmission, drive shafts and wheels, and a whole mass of a vehicle. The spring constants were selected so that resonance of a system could be avoided. Damper springs were optimized on the basis of the spring constants, impulsive torques, compressed angles, spring counts, fatigue constraints, etc. Topology optimization was performed for three plates with the damper springs. The compliance was set up as an objective function, and volume fraction was fixed below 0.3. A new shape for the plates was proposed on the basis of the topology result.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.63-70
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• 2014

Design sensitivity analysis and topology design optimization for a piezoelectric crystal resonator are developed. The piezoelectric crystal resonator is deformed mechanically when subjected to electric charge on the electrodes, or vice versa. The Mindlin plate theory with higher-order interpolations along thickness direction is employed for analyzing the thickness-shear vibrations of the crystal resonator. Thin electrode plates are masked on the top and bottom layers of the crystal plate in order to enforce to vibrate it or detect electric signals. Although the electrode is very thin, its weight and shape could change the performance of the resonators. Thus, the design variables are the bulk material densities corresponding to the mass of masking electrode plates. An optimization problem is formulated to find the optimal topology of electrodes, maximizing the thickness-shear contribution of strain energy at the desired motion and restricting the allowable volume and area of masking plates. The necessary design gradients for the thickness-shear frequency(eigenvalue) and the corresponding mode shape(eigenvector) are computed very efficiently and accurately using the analytical design sensitivity analysis method using the eigenvector expansion concept. Through some demonstrative numerical examples, the design sensitivity analysis method is verified to be very efficient and accurate by comparing with the finite difference method. It is also observed that the optimal electrode design yields an improved mode shape and thickness-shear energy.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.213-221
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• 2011

In this study, we discussed the weight reducing of a urban railway-car body, in particular, of the Korean EMU, by optimizing topology and size of aluminum extrusion profiles. The heaviest parts of aluminum railway-car bodies, i.e., the base plate of underframe and side panels of side frame composed of double skin structures are considered for optimization. Topology optimization process is applied to obtain get an optimized rib structure for the base plate. The thickness of ribs and plates of the topologically optimized base plate and the existing side panel are also optimized by employing the size optimization process. The results are verified by comparing the maximum von Mises stresses and maximum deformation in the case of the existing design with those in the case of the optimized design. It is shown that the weight of a base plate and side panel can be reduced by 12% and that the weight of the whole car body can be reduced by 8.5%.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.67-74
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• 2007

The unsymmetrically layered artificial material model is consistently introduced to find the optimum topologies of the plate structures. Reissner-Mindlin (RM) plate theory is adopted to formulate the present 9-node plate element considering the first-order shear deformation of the plates. In the topology optimization process, the strain energy to be minimized is employed as the objective function and the initial volume of structures is adopted as the constraint function. In addition, the resizing algorithm based on the optimality criteria is used to update the hole size introduced in the proposed artificial material model. Several numerical examples are rallied out to investigate the performance of the proposed technique. From numerical results, the proposed topology optimization techniques are found to be very effective to produce the optimum topology of plate structures. In particular, the proposed unsymmetric stiffening layer model make it possible to produce more realistic stiffener design of the plate structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.633-649
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• 2022

This paper is first implemented with the bending behavior of three-dimensional functionally graded (3DFG) plates in the framework of level set-based topology optimization (LS-based TO). Besides, due to the suitable properties of the current design domain, the thin-plate spline (TPS) is recognized as a RBF to construct the LS function. The overall mechanical properties of the 3DFG plate are assessed using a power-law distribution scheme via Mori-Tanaka micromechanical material model. The bending response is obtained using the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). The mixed interpolation of four elements of tensorial components (MITC4) is also implemented to overcome a well-known shear locking problem when the thickness becomes thinner. The Hamilton-Jacobi method is utilized in each iteration to enforce the necessary boundary conditions. The mathematical formulas are expressed in great detail for the LS-based TO using 3DFG materials. Several numerical examples are exhibited to verify the efficiency and reliability of the current methodology with the previously reported literature. Finally, the influences of FG materials in the optimized design are explained in detail to illustrate the behaviors of optimized structures.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.456-461
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• 2003

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device in which the energy of a chemical reaction is converted directly into electricity. By combining hydrogen fuel with oxygen from air, electricity is formed, without combustion of any form. Water and heat are the only by-products when hydrogen is used as the fuel source. Fuel cell stack consists of multi-layered unit cells. A unit cell consists of MEA and bipolar plates. The end plate of fuel cell stack should give a uniform distributed pressure to multi unit cell layers so as to reduce the contact resistance and to prevent the leakage of reactant gases and the damage of multi layer components. The current end plate is redundantly large and heavy. It makes the power per unit volume reduced. Topology optimization of end plate is conducted for mass reduction and enhancement of bending rigidity. The evaluation of the current design and the recommendation for the future design is remarked.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.363-371
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• 2022

Traditional metal dampers have disadvantages such as a higher yield point and inadequate adjustability. The experimental results show that the low yield point steel has superior energy dissipation hysteretic capacity and can be applied to seismic structures. To overcome these deficiencies, a novel compound metal damper comprising both low yield point steel plates and common steel plates is presented. The optimization objectives, including "maximum rigidity" and "full stress state", are proposed to obtain the optimal edge shape of a compound metal damper. The numerical results show that the optimized composite metal damper has the advantages such as full hysteresis curve, uniform stress distribution, more sufficient energy consumption, and it can adjust the yield strength of the damper according to the engineering requirements. In view of the mechanical characteristics of the compound metal damper, the equivalent model of eccentric cross bracing is established, and the approximate analytical solution of the yield strength and the yield displacement is proposed. A nonlinear simulation analysis is carried out for the overall aseismic capacity of three-layer-frame structures with a compound metal damper. It is verified that a compound metal damper has better energy dissipation capacity and superior seismic performance, especially for a damper with double-objective optimized shape.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.283-289
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• 2015

In this study, the lightweight design of a brake bracket for a composite bogie was studied by considering two brake bracket models with thicknesses of 12t and 9t, respectively. For achieving this goal, finite element analysis and topology optimization were conducted. Firstly, the largest cross-sectional areas of the vertical and horizontal plates of the brake bracket were selected as the design variables. As the constraint, the Z-axis displacement of the brake bracket was increased by 2.5 units from the initial displacement value. The minimum volume fraction of the design regions was chosen as the objective function. The full model comprised a composite bogie frame and brackets attached together. However, to reduce the analysis time, 1D beam elements were used instead of the composite bogie frame by ensuring its equivalence with the full model. The result revealed that the weights of the 12t and 9t models of the brake bracket were reduced to 60 kg and 31 kg, respectively.