Practical Examples of Efficient Design Optimisation by Coupling VR&D GENESIS and LS-DYNA

With the ever increasing demand for the efficient use of materials to reduce manufacturing costs and product mass; the use of optimisation techniques have become common place in CAE. The optimisation techniques used for optimising in the non-linear domain, and those used for linear domain problems have until recently been distinctly separate philosophies. For instance topology optimisation would be used with linear static analyses, but could not be applied to non-linear problems. VR&D GENESIS provides a fully integrated linear static analysis and optimisation solver code. GRM have developed an interface so that GENESIS can be coupled to non-linear problems solved in LS- DYNA. The coupling allows the advanced analysis capabilities found in LS-DYNA to be coupled to the Topology, Topometry and Shape optimisation techniques of VR&D GENESIS. The paper outlines the processes already developed by GRM Consulting Ltd1 to allow this coupling, and the most recent developments. These developments allow the analysis methods available in LS- DYNA to be optimised by the optimisation methods available in VR&D GENESIS. The latest developments have taken the method from a research project to a code suitable for use in production level optimisation tasks The practical examples are intended to show how the use of this method allows non-linear domain optimisation to consider thousands of design variables, non-linear and linear load cases, whilst reducing the number of function calls required to converge.