Author Archives: io

Luxon Engineering Suspension Uprights

Luxon Engineering designed and produced Suspension Uprights for race cars (link). They optimized the structure for 16 load-cases. The results are great, as 40% weight savings with 225% increase in stiffness. The parts were manufactured by CNC machining.

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Malaguti rear arm

Malaguti (link) uses topology optimization for their motorcycle’s rear arm. Instead of giving all the load cases to the optimization software, they optimized the part for different load cases, and combined the results themselves, which seems like a reluctant to … Continue reading

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Industrial Design

Luca Frattari from Faculty of Architecture University of Camerino (link) experimented on usage of topology optimization with industrial design. Chairs were designed and produced by Objet 3-D printing machines.

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Permobil – Swerea wheelchair linkage

Swerea, a Swedish R&D company, developed a wheelchair linkage for Permobil utilising topology optimization (link). The original part was forged aluminium weighting 1.3 kg. Different manufacturing techniques were considered, aluminium high pressure die-cast part was the cheapest but did not … Continue reading

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Lanxess Clutch pedal

Lanxess used topology optimization to develop a steel-Durethan hybrid (link) . Durethan is the trade name for Lanxess range of engineering thermoplastics based on polyamide 6 and polyamide 66. Glass fiber reinforced Durethan was used to form ribs inside the … Continue reading

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Sacmi hydraulic press

The hydraulic press by Sacmi (link1, link2) was designed using topology optimization.The topology optimized shape is displayed in the final product, which looks extraordinary for an industrial machine. The name of this series of presses is Android indeed.    

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ZF Ship Gearbox Housing

ZF uses topology optimization to develop a Ship Gearbox Housing (link). The design combines thrust bearing into the gearbox. Thrust bearing deals with the loads that arise from the propeller (or jet). So loads are huge. The special criteria that … Continue reading

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Concrete Aesthetics

This article surveys topology optimization from an aesthetical and architectural point of view. The project was carried under the name of “Unikabeton – Industrial production of unique concrete elements via digital fabrication” with many contributers. The enterance page http://fluxstructures.net also … Continue reading

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Formula SAE car bell crank

As a master thesis study (link) a Formula SAE cars bell crank was topology optimized. The bell crank is highly stressed, the largest load acting on it being 3500 N. The cranks weight was reduced to 140 grams which is … Continue reading

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Ricardo

Ricardo, worlds leading engine and transmission developer, uses topology optimization to develop its products (link1, link2). The sample from the first article seems to be a production component and it is reported that the optimization decreases design iterations and increases … Continue reading

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