The goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the use of multiple materials in plate-like structures structure and provide engineers and designers an appropriate view point of multi-material topology optimization when making decision and information in design. Element density distribution contours of mixing multiple material densities are linked to Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) as a design model. The mathematical formulation of multi-material topology optimization problem solving minimum structural compliance is an alternating active-phase algorithm with the Gauss-Seidel version as an optimization model of optimality criteria. Some numerical examples are considered to illustrate the reliability and accuracy of the present design method for multi-material topology optimization.

This paper studies about the buckling analysis of multi-material structure especially compressed column using topology optimization. The buckling is stated as a constraint in the optimization problem. A clamped-pinned column with applied axial compressive load is analyzed. An active-phase algorithm is used to solve multi-phase topology optimization problem. The distribution of different materials is determined in a isotropic two-dimensional design domain. The material properties is modified based on the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) interpolation approach. The Method of Moving Asymptotes (MMA) is used to update the topology design variables which is relative element densities. The optimal designs of the column structure are presented and discused in the numerical applications.