Otimização estrutural de rolo polimérico de correias transportadoras utilizando modelos substitutos e o método CMA-ES

Abstract

This dissertation presents the development of a structural optimization methodology applied to the design of polymeric rollers used in mineral conveyor belts. The objective is to reduce the overall mass of the assembly while maintaining mechanical integrity requirements and compliance with normative constraints. The proposed methodology consists of two sequential stages. In the first stage, a parametric optimization is performed to define the optimal geometry of the polymeric outer tube and the metallic shaft, considering a wider range of inner tube radii and outer shaft radii than those typically adopted in previous studies. Subsequently, a topology optimization is applied to the resulting outer tube geometry, exploring three lattice-type cellular structure configurations. A relevant feature of this work is that the structural analyses account for the viscoelastic behavior of polymeric materials, enabling a more realistic representation of the time-dependent mechanical response of the system. To make the optimization process computationally feasible, metamodels based on radial basis functions are employed and integrated with finite element simulations. The search for optimal solutions is carried out using the CMA-ES algorithm, whose performance is compared with the GBNM method previously used by other authors in similar cases. The results indicate that the parametric optimization achieved a mass reduction of approximately 41% relative to the reference design. The topology optimization stage led to an additional but limited mass reduction, on the order of 4% compared to the parametric-optimized design. Furthermore, the CMA-ES algorithm demonstrated performance comparable to that of GBNM in terms of solution quality and computational time, confirming its applicability and robustness for structural optimization problems.