Stress-based topology optimization of continuum structures for the elastic contact problems with friction.

Structural problems have various nonlinearities in the real world and these nonlinearities should be accommodated in structural topology optimization. This work proposes a topology optimization method for minimizing the maximum von Mises stress of elastic continuum structures with frictional contact under material usage constraint, using an extended Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) method. Stresses are treated as global performance (objective) function, the global von Mises stress is measured by the -norm stress aggregation approach, and the friction behavior is governed by the Coulomb friction law regularized in analogy with the perfect elasto-plastic theory.