Application of dual kriging to structural shape optimization based on the boundary contour method

Summary The paper presents an approach in which the coupling of dual kriging and the boundary contour method (BCM) is applied to structural shape optimization problems in mechanical engineering design. The problems consist of optimizing the shape of an elastic body, which requires minimizing an objective function subject to some given constraints, such as those of displacement, stress or manufacturing. The originality of the present work is involved with the use of two novel methods that are combined here to solve structural shape optimization problems. The first one, called dual kriging, is a general, versatile interpolation and geometric modeling tool. The second one is a new variant of the boundary element method (BEM), called the BCM, which achieves a further reduction in dimensionality of analysis problems. Based on the advantages of these two methods, the coupling approach presented here is expected to offer an effective as well as a straightforward manner for solving shape optimal design problems. Received 18 December 1997; accepted for publication 21 April 1998