Shape optimization of cast parts with porous material

The effect of microscopic material inhomogeneities on the shape optimization of structural parts has been investigated. For the example of a flat, dog-bone shaped tensile test specimen it has been shown that material porosity has an influence on the stress distribution in the specimen and therefore on the shape optimization results in general. The porosity has been implemented by a random generator into the structural analysis model. In order to capture the scattering of the pore distribution in real materials, 30 models have been generated for each combination of shape design variables. The stochastic responses with expectation value and variance have been approximated by response surfaces. The comparison of the optima for different porosities shows that the location of the optimum depends strongly on the porosity