On some properties of the compliance-volume fraction Pareto front in topology optimization useful for material selection

Abstract: Selecting the optimal material for a part designed through topology optimization is a complex problem. The shape and properties of the Pareto front plays an important role in this selection. In this paper we show that the compliance-volume fraction Pareto fronts of some topology optimization problems in linear elasticity share some useful properties. These properties provide an interesting point of view on the efficiency of topology optimization compared to other design approaches such as parametric structural optimization. We construct a simple meta-model which requires only one full topology optimization to fit the whole Pareto fronts. Precise Pareto fronts are obtained independently. The fast meta-model constructed has a maximum error of 6.4% with respect to these precise Pareto fronts, on the different problems tested. The selection of the optimal material is then successfully tested on the mass minimization of an MBB beam with an illustrative choice of 4 materials.