Comparison study of some commercial structural optimization software systems

Mathematical optimization theories are employed for the design of structures in structural optimization. Structural optimization is being widely utilized for practical problems due to well-developed commercial software systems. Three representative structural optimization systems such as Genesis, MSC Nastran and OptiStruct are investigated and evaluated by solving various test examples in different scales. The design capabilities of three software systems are explored and the performances of the systems are compared. The performance of structural optimization depends on the quality of the optimum solution and the computational time, and these aspects are compared from an application viewpoint. For a fair comparison, the same formulations are utilized, and the same optimization methods are employed for each example. Also, the same system environment is prepared, and the same optimization parameters are used. Additionally, various design options of each software system are tested for the best performance. Linear static response size, shape, topology, topometry and topography optimizations are applied to the examples and the results are compared. No system seems to be the best in all cases and each system has advantages and disadvantages depending on the application. In general, Genesis is excellent in computational time while OptiStruct gives excellent optimum solutions, in size, topometry and topology optimizations. Meanwhile, MSC Nastran presents good solutions in shape and topography optimizations.