A Review of Methods for the Geometric Post-Processing of Topology Optimized Models

Topology optimization (TO) has 1 rapidly evolved from an academic exercise into an 2 exciting discipline with numerous industrial applica3 tions. Various TO algorithms have been established, 4 and several commercial TO software packages are 5 now available. However, a major challenge in TO 6 is the post-processing of the optimized models for 7 downstream applications. Typically, optimal topolo8 gies generated by TO are faceted (triangulated) mod9 els, extracted from an underlying finite element mesh. 10 These triangulated models are dense, of poor qual11 ity, and lack feature/parametric control. This poses 12 serious challenges to downstream applications such 13 as prototyping/testing, design validation, and design 14 exploration. 15 One strategy to address this issue is to directly im16 pose downstream requirements as constraints in the 17 TO algorithm. However, this not only restricts the 18 design space, it may even lead to TO failure. Sep19 aration of post-processing from TO is more robust 20 and flexible. The objective of this paper is to provide 21 a critical review of various post-processing methods, 22 and categorize them based both on targeted applica23 tions, and underlying strategies. The paper concludes 24 with unresolved challenges and future work. 25