Exploring the 2.5D SIMTP with the Adaptive Refinement Based on the Nodal Thickness

In this paper, we discussed further developments of 2.5D SIMTP, a new structural optimization tool that scales the thickness of a point in a plane, and this plane can be discretized using a 2.5D plane stress element, which is exclusively developed to explore the above-proposed tool. Our recent publication on 2.5D SIMTP suggests a higher threshold of lower energy elements for having a stable finite element analysis. Therefore, an adaptive refinement based on the thickness is introduced to achieve thresholds as low as one in a thousand. The results using adaptive refinement on classical optimization problems showed the islanding phenomenon where this pathology was not observed until after filtering. Also, an optimized MBB beam is 3D printed with ABS M30i material to demonstrate the capabilities of 2.5D SIMTP.