Patent Document ID: 20090164178
Application ID: 12340192
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method of designing a structure representing a physical object, comprising: (a) segmenting an initial design of the structure into a plurality of cells; (b) computing a field state of the plurality of cells in the structure based on a finite element analysis; (c) computing a performance variable representing a property of the structure required to satisfy a performance constraint; (d) updating a design variable representing a material distribution in each cell based on the performance variable and a material distribution update rule to generate an updated design of the structure, the material distribution update rule changing the design variable of each cell to converge the field state of each cell towards a target field state of each cell; (e) repeating steps (b) through (d) responsive to the updated design not satisfying a terminating condition; and (f) outputting the updated design of the structure responsive to the updated design satisfying the terminating condition.