Structural topology optimization is a modern computational design approach that has found widespread use, particularly in the early design phase of products and assemblies. Several commercial finite element programs, such as Optistruct™ from Altair Engineering used in this study, now provide user-friendly interfaces to these powerful algorithms so that topology optimization may now be incorporated into student design competitions at the undergraduate level. A topology optimization problem may be written as:
       find: material distribution
       to minimize: mass of the structure
       subject to: constraints on the structure’s compliance
The objective of this research is to apply topology optimization to determine the best layout of the material that composes the chassis structure of the Formula SAE car. Once a design space is defined using solid modeling software, a tetrahedral mesh (including 316,786 elements in this case) is constructed for finite element analysis and topology optimization. Existing structures such as the roll bars, suspension components and the engine are added to the model which is subjected to the loads that are to be considered as part of the design. This study focused on computing the best material distribution under torsion loading and braking conditions. A unique feature of this work was to better understand the use of existing structure in the topology optimization process, and to perform a trade-off study to construct a topology optimization-derived Pareto Curve. Example optimal topologies are shown below.