TONR: An exploration for a novel way combining neural network with topology optimization

The rapid development of deep learning has opened a new door to the exploration of topology optimization methods. The combination of deep learning and topology optimization has become one of the hottest research fields at the moment. Different from most existing work, this paper conducts an in-depth study on the method of directly using neural networks (NN) to carry out topology optimization. Inspired by the idea from the field of “Inverting Representation of Image” and “Physics-Informed Neural Network”, a topology optimization via neural reparameterization framework (TONR) that can solve various topology optimization problems is formed. The core idea of TONR is Reparameterization , which means the update of the design variables (pseudo-density) in the conventional topology optimization method is transformed into the update of the NN’s parameters. The sensitivity analysis in the conventional topology optimization method is realized by automatic differentiation technology. With the update of NN’s parameters, the density field is optimized. Some strategies for dealing with design constraints, determining NN’s initial parameters, and accelerating training are proposed in the paper. In addition, the solution of the multi-constrained topology optimization problem is also embedded in the TONR framework. Numerical examples show that TONR can stably obtain optimized structures for different optimization problems, including the stress-constrained problem, structural natural frequency optimization problems, compliant mechanism design problems, heat conduction system design problems, and the optimization problem of hyperelastic structures. Compared with the existing methods that combine deep learning with topology optimization, TONR does not need to construct a dataset in advance and does not suffer from structural disconnection. The structures obtained by TONR can be comparable to the conventional methods. • This paper conducts an in-depth exploration of the method that directly executes TO using the NN itself. • In TONR, the update of the design variables in the conventional-TO is transformed into the update of the NN’s parameters. • TONR can solve various optimization problems. • The performance of the optimized structures obtained by TONR can be comparable to that of the conventional method. • TONR employs automatic differentiation to handle differential operators.