Optimal Design Approaches

MEED

Benoît Raucent, Bruno Dehez 

Seeking for an optimal solution in a design problem is a major concern in the industry, owing to the significant economic issues related to the development of a product. In this context, assisting – or even replacing – the designer with new design tools is of particular interest if the problem involves multiphysics phenomena. In collaboration with the Applied Mathematics group of the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM), we develop topology optimization methods. These methods search, regarding some objective function and constraints, the best way to distribute some predefined materials within a design space. To date, these tools are applied to 2D electromagnetic design problems such as electrical actuators, superconducting magnets, ... The future challenges in this field concern the development of generic and sufficiently powerful tools in order to address 3D multiphysics design problems.