Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2012
Searching for the optimal partitioning of a domain leads to the use of the adjoint methodin topological asymptotic expansions to know the influence of a domain perturbation on acost function. Our approach works by restricting to local subproblems containing theperturbation and outperforms the adjoint method by providing approximations of higherorder. It is a universal tool, easily adapted to different kinds of real problems and doesnot need the fundamental solution of the problem; furthermore our approach allows toconsider finite perturbations and not infinitesimal ones. This paper provides theoreticaljustifications in the linear case and presents some applications with topologicalperturbations, continuous perturbations and mesh perturbations. This proposed approach canalso be used to update the solution of singularly perturbed problems.