M. Goodarzi, S. A. Latifi Rostami,
Volume 16, Issue 2 (4-2026)
Abstract
In thermomechanical topology optimization, variations in material distribution influence not only the structural stiffness but also the temperature field and thermal loads induced by constrained thermal expansion. In this study, a moving morphable component (MMC)-based framework is proposed for thermomechanical topology optimization, in which the density-based representation of the SIMP method is replaced with an explicit geometry description using an MMC. In the proposed approach, steady-state heat conduction analysis, equivalent thermomechanical load formulation, and structural mechanical analysis are retained, whereas compliance minimization subject to a volume constraint is adopted as the optimization objective. The elemental density field is derived from the topology description and Heaviside functions, and the sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the geometric parameters of the MMC is evaluated using the chain rule. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed method achieves satisfactory thermomechanical performance while producing smoother boundaries and a more explicit geometric representation than the conventional SIMP method.
