scholarly journals Guidelines for Topology Optimization as Concept Design Tool and Their Application for the Mechanical Design of the Inner Frame to Support an Ancient Bronze Statue

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 7834
Author(s):  
Abas Ahmad ◽  
Michele Bici ◽  
Francesca Campana

For the past few decades, topology optimization (TO) has been used as a structural design optimization tool. With the passage of time, this kind of usage of TO has been extended to many application fields and branches, thanks to a better understanding of how manufacturing constraints can achieve a practical design solution. In addition, the advent of additive manufacturing and its subsequent advancements have further increased the applications of TO, raising the chance of competitive manufacturing. Design for additive manufacturing has also promoted the adoption of TO as a concept design tool of structural components. Nevertheless, the most frequent applications are related to lightweight design with or without design for assembly. A general approach to integrate TO in concept designs is still missing. This paper aims to close this gap by proposing guidelines to translate design requirements into TO inputs and to include topology and structural concerns at the early stage of design activity. Guidelines have been applied for the concept design of an inner supporting frame of an ancient bronze statue, with several constraints related to different general design requirements, i.e., lightweight design, minimum displacement, and protection of the statue’s structural weak zones to preserve its structural integrity. Starting from the critical analysis of the list of requirements, a set of concepts is defined through the application of TO with different set-ups (loads, boundary conditions, design and non-design space) and ranked by the main requirements. Finally, a validation of the proposed approach is discussed comparing the achieved results with the ones carried out through a standard iterative concept design.

Author(s):  
Guanlin Xie ◽  
Yongjia Dong ◽  
Jing Zhou ◽  
Zhongqi Sheng

The hydraulic valve block is a core component of an integrated hydraulic system. In practical usage, it exhibits problems such as material waste, long manufacturing cycle, significant energy loss, and leakage. Based on the aforementioned existing problems, this study presents the design of the hydraulic system valve block based on the valve block design principle. The internal valve channel of the hydraulic valve block is optimized for additive manufacturing technology to avoid auxiliary drilling, solve the problem of potential liquid leakage, and shorten the manufacturing cycle. Thus, it is more suitable for the production of customized complex hydraulic valve blocks. The multiobjective topology optimization method is applied to the lightweight design of the hydraulic valve block to save resources and decrease energy consumption. The results indicate that when compared with the original model, the minimum reduction rate of pressure loss in each oil circuit orifice after optimization of the hydraulic valve block corresponds to 32.02%, the maximum corresponds to 71.38%; the maximum stress of the final design corresponds to 542.9 MPa, which satisfies the material strength requirement; and the mass is decreased by 68.9%. Thus, the lightweight design of the hydraulic valve block is realized.


Author(s):  
Sandeep Medikonda ◽  
Sriraghav Sridharan ◽  
Sunil Acharya ◽  
John Doyle

Abstract Recently, additive manufacturing methods have gained popularity for their ability to produce complex mechanical parts where conventional manufacturing methods are not suitable. Such methods not only offer a great sense of freedom to engineers but when combined with topology optimization tools can be used to simulate structures with complex shapes which satisfy the real-world loading constraints while requiring as little material as possible. Hence, combining topology optimization and additive production procedures offers a promising approach for obtaining optimized mechanical parts. This article presents a complete workflow for studying complex topology optimized parts that can be printed using additive manufacturing. We focus on topologically optimized design approach for additive manufacturing with case studies on lightweight design of aviation safety-critical parts. The complete workflow of such a setup is discussed. The Topology Optimization of these parts has been carried out using the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) algorithm [1], where a discrete optimization problem is converted to a continuous problem. The primary objective of the optimization studies is to maximize the stiffness of the chosen parts while minimizing their mass at the same time. We also investigate the effect of design constraints to account for feasible manufacturing of the part while maintaining the structural response to performance loads. These optimized parts are then analyzed using a lumped layer approach to simulate powder bed fusion (PBF) [2] as a coupled thermal-structural analysis within ANSYS®, where the areas of maximum deformation and stress resulting from additive printing are predicted. The influence that the orientation of a part’s build direction has on the end results is investigated using a parametric study. Effect of a cartesian mesh vs a tetrahedron mesh on the results have been analyzed and best practices while working with coupled topology optimization and additive simulations have also been discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 568 ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
Yong Wang ◽  
Kun Li ◽  
Bao Ping Cui ◽  
Zu Fang Zhang

In order to meet the lightweight design requirements of one swing-type plate shears, the topology optimization method is applied to improve the structure of bed. According to the analysis of the actual working conditions, the reasonable load and boundary conditions are determined. The conceptual model of bed structure is established by using topology optimization method. Lightweight improvement scheme is proposed based on the topology optimization results, and the rationality of scheme is verified by test and analysis. Different parts of the bed are thickened or thinned, and the influences of different thickness of the stiffener on the maximum principal stress, total displacement, displacement in Y direction and weight of bed structure model are analyzed. A reasonable lightweight scheme of shear machine bed is proposed. The weight of the bed is reduced and the lightweight purpose is finally achieved in the case of meeting the requirements of shearing accuracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (55) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Felipe Fiorentin ◽  
Bernardo Oliveira ◽  
João Pereira ◽  
José Correia ◽  
Abilio M.P. de Jesus ◽  
...  

The main goal of the present research is to propose an integrated methodology to address the fatigue performance of topology optimized components, produced by additive manufacturing. The main steps of the component design will be presented, specially the methods and parameters applied to the topology optimization and the post-smoothing process. The SIMP method was applied in order to obtain a lighter component and a suitable stiffness for the desired application. In addition, since residual stresses are intrinsic to every metallic additive manufacturing process, the influence of those stresses will be also analyzed. The Laser Powder Bed Fusion was numerically simulated aiming at evaluating the residual stresses the workpiece during the manufacturing process and to investigate how they could influence the fatigue behavior of the optimized component. The effect of the built orientation of the workpiece on the residual stresses at some selected potential critical points are evaluated. The final design solution presented a stiffness/volume ratio nearly 6 times higher when compared to the initial geometry. By choosing the built orientation, it is possible impact favorably in the fatigue life of the component.


Author(s):  
Mikhail Osanov ◽  
James K. Guest

The rapid advance of additive manufacturing technologies has provided new opportunities for creating complex structural shapes. In order to fully exploit these opportunities, however, engineers must re-think the design process and leverage these new capabilities while respecting manufacturing constraints inherent in various processes. Topology optimization, as a free-from design tool, is a potentially powerful approach to addressing this design challenge provided the manufacturing process is properly accounted for. This work examines geometric constraints related to feature size and the layer-by-layer nature of the manufacturing process. A simple modification to the Heaviside Projection Method, an approach for naturally achieving geometric constraints in topology optimization, is proposed and demonstrated to have clear, understandable impact on three-dimensional optimized beam designs.


Author(s):  
Graeme Sabiston ◽  
Luke Ryan ◽  
Il Yong Kim

As the field of design for additive manufacturing continues to evolve and accelerate towards admitting more robust designs requiring fewer instances of user-intervention, we will see the conventional design cycle evolve dramatically. However, to fully take advantage of this emerging technology — particularly with respect to large scale manufacturing operations — considerations of productivity from a fiscal perspective are sure to become of the utmost importance. A mathematical model incorporating the cost and time factors associated with additive manufacturing processes has been developed and implemented as a multi-weighted single-objective topology optimization algorithm. The aforementioned factors have been identified as component surface area and volume of support material. These quantities are optimized alongside compliance, producing a design tool that gives the user the option to choose the relative weighting of performance over cost. In two academic examples, minimization of compliance alongside surface area and support structure volume yield geometries demonstrating that considerable decreases in support material in particular can be achieved without sacrificing significant part compliance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 1475-1481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Rezayat ◽  
Jared Richard Bell ◽  
Alex J. Plotkowski ◽  
Sudarsanam S. Babu

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the multi-solution nature of topology optimization (TO) as a design tool for additive manufacturing (AM). The sensitivity of topologically optimized parts and manufacturing constraints to the initial starting point of the optimization process leading to structures with equivalent performance is explored. Design/methodology/approach A modified bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) code was used as the numerical approach to optimize a cantilever beam problem and reduce the mass by 50 per cent. Several optimized structures with relatively equivalent mechanical performance were generated by changing the initial starting point of the TO algorithm. These optimized structures were manufactured using fused deposition modeling (FDM). The equivalence of strain distribution in FDM parts was tested with the digital image correlation (DIC) technique and compared with that from the modified BESO code. Findings The results confirm that TO could lead to a wide variety of non-unique solutions based on loading and manufacturability constraints. The modified BESO code was able to reduce the support structure needed to build the simple two-dimensional cantilever beam by 15 per cent while keeping the mechanical performance at the same level. Originality/value The originality of this paper lies in introduction and application of the multi-solution nature of TO for AM as a design tool for optimizing structures with minimized features in the overhang condition and the need for support structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kentaro Shinoda ◽  
Hiroaki Noda ◽  
Koichi Ohtomi ◽  
Takayuki Yamada ◽  
Jun Akedo ◽  
...  

A new, multi-dimensional, additive manufacturing process for fine ceramics was proposed and developed as part of a national project in Japan. The process consists of three-dimensional printing and two-dimensional coating of fine ceramics. A new coating process, hybrid aerosol deposition (HAD), was proposed as the ceramic coating process. The HAD process is a hybrid of aerosol deposition (AD) and plasma spray. Such new technologies, however, usually take a long time to move from first discovery to use in producing a commercial product. For example, a past study showed that it took nearly 15 years from the invention of the AD process to the time it became a technology used at an industrial company. Therefore, it is very important to consider how to accelerate the learning and technological transfer of a new process to industry in addition to how to develop new processes once they emerge. In this study, a new scheme, a coating hub, is proposed to promote the transfer of the HAD process to industrial adoption. In the coating hub, a collaboration scheme for companies to get interest of the technology, even in the early stages of technological development, is considered. Here, needs-seeds matching, reliable relationships, intellectual property, and the generalization of technology are considered. Another important scheme of the coating hub is to try to couple design with manufacturing. Here, product design tools for agile production are provided. In order to attract and evaluate consumers for targeted products, a Kansei delight design based on the Kano model is introduced. A delight map viewer is provided to visualize potential consumers’ delight factors. Detailed planning from the early trial stage is introduced with the viewer. A topology optimization tool is also provided in the coating hub as a design tool. In order to validate this coating hub concept, a ceramic frying pan is designed as a case study. The delight map viewer proves effective for those who are not design professionals to consider the attractiveness of products based on user evaluation. The coupling of the topology optimization tool is also useful for the multidimensional additive manufacturing of ceramics proposed in this study. This case study implies that even a small manufacturer could design a new product by utilizing the coating hub concept. It would give many new opportunities not only to big manufactures interested in high-end business-to-business components but also to supporting industries and even to individuals to utilize new emerging coating technologies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 325-334
Author(s):  
A. Nordin

AbstractThis paper describes an approach for designing lightweight components produced through additive manufacturing (AM). Lightweight design is often done through topology optimization (TO). However, the process of manually interpreting mesh-based and imprecise results from a TO into a geometry that fulfils all requirements is complex. To aid in this process, this paper suggest an approach based on combining overhang-constrained TO with lattice-based TO to automate complex tasks, retain parametric control, and to minimize manufacturing cost. The approach is validated through a benchmark part.


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