Article

The periodic resin configuration design for ceramic-resin composite structure using topology optimization

Engineering Simulation and Aerospace Computing (ESAC), The Key Laboratory of Contemporary Design and Integrated Manufacturing Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710072, P.R. China

^* e-mail: jh.zhu@nwpu.edu.cn

Received: 4 June 2013
Accepted: 13 November 2013

Abstract

The ceramic-resin composite structure has broad prospects in many fields like rapid casting and thermal protection. Due to the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of resin is about 10 times higher than that of ceramic, the excessive thermal expansion of the resin pattern will lead to the undesirable crack of the ceramic shell during the heating procedure. The proposed approach is to find a reasonable resin configuration minimizing the thermal stress in the ceramic shell. Simultaneously, the mechanical stiffness of the whole structure should be maintained at a certain level to resist the pressure applied on the ceramic shell. In the actual production, the periodic resin configurations are more operable than the disordered configuration, so finding reasonable periodic resin configurations for ceramic-resin composite structure has lots of significance. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the topology optimization method into the periodic resin configuration design for ceramic-resin composite structure. A structural topology optimization procedure in combination with thermo-mechanical finite element analysis has been developed. A single-layer periodic model and a double-layer periodic model are optimized and respective CAD models are rebuilt according to the optimal results. By comparing with the existing hexagonal honeycomb configuration, two optimal designs have shown better performances both in reducing the thermal stress in the ceramic shell and maintaining the stiffness of the whole structure.