TY - EJOU AU - Li, Shu AU - Atluri, S. N. TI - The MLPG Mixed Collocation Method for Material Orientation and Topology Optimization of Anisotropic Solids and Structures T2 - Computer Modeling in Engineering \& Sciences PY - 2008 VL - 30 IS - 1 SN - 1526-1506 AB - In this paper, a method based on a combination of an optimization of directions of orthotropy, along with topology optimization, is applied to continuum orthotropic solids with the objective of minimizing their compliance. The spatial discretization algorithm is the so called Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) "mixed collocation'' method for the design domain, and the material-orthotropy orientation angles and the nodal volume fractions are used as the design variables in material optimization and topology optimization, respectively. Filtering after each iteration diminishes the checkerboard effect in the topology optimization problem. The example results are provided to illustrate the effects of the orthotropic material characteristics in structural topology-optimization. KW - orthotropy KW - material-axes orientation optimization KW - topology optimization KW - meshless method KW - MLPG KW - collocation KW - mixed method DO - 10.3970/cmes.2008.030.037