A Novel Topology Optimization Approach using Conditional Deep Learning

Topology design optimization offers a tremendous opportunity in design and manufacturing freedoms by designing and producing a part from the ground-up without a meaningful initial design as required by conventional shape design optimization approaches. Ideally, with adequate problem statements, to formulate and solve the topology design problem using a standard topology optimization process, such as SIMP (Simplified Isotropic Material with Penalization) is possible. However, in reality, an estimated over thousands of design iterations is often required for just a few design variables, the conventional optimization approach is, in general, impractical or computationally unachievable for real-world applications significantly diluting the development of the topology optimization technology. There is, therefore, a need for a different approach that will be able to optimize the initial design topology effectively and rapidly. In this study, a novel topology optimization approach based on conditional Wasserstein generative adversarial networks (CWGAN) is developed to replicate the conventional topology optimization algorithms in an extremely computationally inexpensive way. CWGAN consists of a generator and a discriminator, both of which are deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). The limited samples of data, quasi-optimal planar structures, needed for training purposes are generated using the conventional topology optimization algorithms. With CWGANs, the topology optimization conditions can be set to a required value before generating samples.