Suppressing gray-scale elements in topology optimization of continua using modified optimality criterion methods

This study proposes a new topology optimization method for continuum structures, which includes modified heuristic optimality criteria in conjunction with the SIMP scheme to suppress gray-scale elements occurred in topology optimization of continua through smoothed Heaviside function. In the process of numerical implementation, the gray scale elements are suppressed to approach the binary bounds of 0 or 1 by utilizing the proposed approach and the corresponding convergence criterion. Two typical numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in suppressing the gray-scale elements with intermediate densities, as well as the efficiency of this method in the numerical procedure.