Recent Advancements in Altair’s Topology Optimization Solution

As we start the new year, we thought it would be worthwhile to look at some product enhancements that happened around the topology optimization capabilities of the Altair Engineering portfolio over the 12-18 months. Altair has, again, looked to lead with responding to the needs of the users by continuing to focus on this in key areas. Over the last year we have posted a few blogs that talk about the implicit modeling capability that partners well with topology optimization, but wont be covered in this post.

Another set of resources that might be worth checking is the blog and webinar we created last year that centered around the Optimization Techniques using Altair OptiStruct.

In this blog post, we will explore the key improvements and highlight how they simplify workflows, drive down costs, and reduce time-to-market.

Fig 1: Control Arm optimization example

Why Focus on Topology Optimization

Before diving into the latest updates, it is worth understanding why topology optimization is a major focus area. Topology allows engineers to create highly efficient, lightweight structures that maintain strength, stiffness, and other performance criteria. By harnessing the power of simulation early in the development cycle, companies can reduce the number of physical prototypes needed and bring products to market faster.

Altair Engineering has long been a pioneer in this field with products such as Altair Inspire and Altair OptiStruct, and these solutions have continuously evolved to keep up with industry demands.

 New Optimization Capabilities

While it is well known that Altair solutions have a wide variety of optimization capabilities like Shape and Size Optimization, Topography Optimization, Multi-Material/Model Optimization, Manufacturing Constraints and Composite Ply Optimization (amongst many others), the following features have been added within the last two major releases:

• Equivalent Static Loads (ESL): With OptiStruct 2024, the ESL method can now be employed within OptiStruct to solve linear transient optimization problems.
  5-Axis Mill Optimization Constraint:  With Inspire and OptiStruct 2023, Altair introduced the ability to add milling constraints for 5-Axis machines and multidirectional cutting tools.

Fig 2: Milling Constraint Option under Shape Controls

• Electrical Analysis: OptiStruct 2023 introduced the ability to run topology, shape, dree-size, and free-shape optimization for both the Nodal Electric Potential and Global Electric Compliance responses.
• Sensitivity Output for Free-Shape Optimization: OptiStruct 2024 now supports sensitivity output for free-shape optimization studies and can be activated using OUTPUT, H3DSHAPE.
• Draw Direction Enhancements: OptiStruct 2024 enhanced the Draw Direction to allow a thickness gradient to be applied with a Free-Size Optimization. Also Level-set optimization now supports obstacle definition in conjunction with a draw-direction constraint.

Improved Solver Efficiency

One of the most notable enhancements to Altair’s topology optimization capabilities lies in the overall solver efficiency. Large-scale, complex simulations used to demand significant computational resources and lengthy run times. However, thanks to newly optimized solver algorithms introduced in the latest releases of Altair Inspire and OptiStruct, users can now handle higher-fidelity models in a fraction of the previous computation time.

• Parallel Processing Enhancements: The solvers now takes greater advantage of multi-core CPUs and GPU acceleration, delivering faster results and enabling designers to iterate on multiple concepts quickly. Altair solutions are also now supported on NVIDIA Grasshopper and Grace CPU Superchip architectures.
• Refined Iteration Techniques: An improved approach to convergence speeds up the process of reaching a stable design solution, which is particularly useful when simulating non-linear behaviors, such as contact or highly detailed geometric features.

Cloud Integration and HPC

As complexity in product design continues to increase, access to high-performance computing (HPC) resources and cloud-based solutions becomes increasingly important. With the Altair offering, users can use opt to use the Altair cloud platform or burst into other platforms such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Over the past year, Altair has continued to enhance its PBS Works platform and cloud integration capabilities to provide seamless access to massive computing power:

• Scalable Simulations: Engineers can run multiple optimization runs simultaneously on HPC clusters or in the cloud, comparing dozens of scenarios in parallel. Users can access these clusters remotely and use them as needed.
• Flexible Licensing: Altair has introduced more flexible licensing models for cloud deployments, allowing companies to pay only for the compute resources they need. This makes large-scale topology optimization projects more accessible to smaller organizations.
• Secure Collaboration: With teams often distributed across various locations, secure cloud-based collaboration ensures that everyone has access to the same data, simulation results, and project updates in real-time. PBS Professional is the only workload manager and job scheduler to have achieved EAL3+ certification and the only workload manager offering integration with RedHat’s SELinux cross-domain security (or multi-level security, MLS) technology.

From faster solver performance to new optimization capabilities, the improvements in Altair Engineering’s topology optimization solutions over the last 12-18 months are proving impactful for the end users. These developments address big challenges faced by engineers and product developers today. If you have any questions or want to discuss it further don’t hesitate to reach out to us.