Results comparison between SIMP and SERA for compliant mechanisms design

The SERA method was extended to the design of compliant mechanisms. This method allows material to be added and removed from the design domain until the optimum topology is reached. The main difference with respect to other bi-directional methods that add and remove elements from the design domain is the separate treatment of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ material. Separate criteria for each material model are defined to efficiently add and remove elements and achieve the optimum topology. The SIMP method is still the most widely used method in the field of topology optimization though. In this approach, the effective property of each element consists of its density raised to a power and multiplied to the material properties of the solid material. This paper presents a comparison of results between these two methods including evolution histories for different examples.