An Efficient Method to Predict the Effect of Design Modifications

Static and dynamic analyses are important tools for the improvement of structural systems. Consider a system where a number of different changes may be synthesized to improve static and dynamic behavior. The analysis depends on numerical optimization schemes for systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. These analyses become computationally burdensome for redesign analysis. This paper presents an efficient method to predict the effect of design modifications on mechanical and structural systems with many degrees of freedom. The method minimizes a cost function which includes natural frequencies, size of design change and static deflections. It uses a finite-element preprocessor to find derivatives of mass and stiffness matrices and computationally efficient techniques to find eigen-value and eigenvector derivatives for use in the optimization.