Structural Optimization and Additive Manufacturing

2014 ◽  
Vol 611-612 ◽  
pp. 811-817 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julen Ibabe ◽  
Antero Jokinen ◽  
Jari Larkiola ◽  
Gurutze Arruabarrena

Additive Manufacturing technology offers almost unlimited capacity when manufacturing parts with complex geometries which could be impossible to get with conventional manufacturing processes. This paper is based on the study of a particular real part which has been redesigned and manufactured using an AM process. The challenge consists of redesigning the geometry of an originally aluminium made part, in order to get a new stainless steel made model with same mechanical properties but with less weight. The new design is the result of a structural optimization process based on Finite Element simulations which is carried out bearing in mind the facilities that an AM process offers.

2019 ◽  
Vol 799 ◽  
pp. 294-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Stanisław Węglowski ◽  
Sylwester Błacha ◽  
Robert Jachym ◽  
Jan Dutkiewicz ◽  
Łukasz Rogal ◽  
...  

Electron beam (EBAM) and laser beam (LBAM) additive manufacturing processes with a deposited material in the form of a wire are an efficient methods enabling the making of component parts. The scope of the presented work was to investigate the influence of technological process on microstructure and mechanical properties such as tensile strength, microhardness and elongation of the fabricated components. The achieved results and gained knowledge will enable the production of a whole structure from stainless steel in the future. The metallographic examination revealed that the microstructure is not fully homogenies, the cell-dendritic areas occurred. Moreover, the microhardness profiles indicated that some fluctuation in the microstructure as well as mechanical properties can be observed on the cross section of deposited components. However, the mechanical tests showed that the tensile strength as well as elongation fulfil the requirement of producer of deposited wire.


Author(s):  
AIL Pais ◽  
C Silva ◽  
MC Marques ◽  
JL Alves ◽  
J Belinha

The aim of this work is the development of a novel framework for structural optimization using bio-inspired remodelling algorithm adapted to additive manufacturing. The fact that polylactic acid (PLA, E = 3145 MPa (Young’s modulus) according to the supplier for parts obtained by injection) shows a similar parameterized behavior with ductile metals, in the sense that both materials are characterized by a bi-linear elastic-plastic law, allows to simulate and prototype parts to be further constructed in ductile metals at a lower cost and then be produced with more expensive fabrication processes. Moreover, cellular materials allow for a significant weight reduction and therefore reduction of production costs. Structural optimization algorithms based on biological phenomena were used to determine the density distribution of the infill density of the specimens. Several simple structures were submitted to distinct complex load cases and analyzed using the mentioned optimization algorithms combined with the finite element method and a meshless method. The surface was divided according to similar density and then converted to stereolitography files and infilled with the gyroid structure at the desired density determined before, using open-source slicing software. Smoothing functions were used to smooth the density field obtained with the remodeling algorithms. The samples were printed with fused filament fabrication technology and submitted to mechanical flexural tests similar to the ones analyzed analytically, namely three- and four-point bending tests. Thus, the factors of analysis were the smoothing parameter and the remodeling method, and the responses evaluated were stiffness, specific stiffness, maximum force, and mass. The experimental results correlated (obtaining accuracy of 35% for the three-point bending load case and 5% for the four-point bending load case) to the numerical results in terms of flexural stiffness and it was found that the complexity of the load case is relevant for the efficiency of the functional gradient. The fused filament fabrication process is still not accurate enough to be able to experimentally compare the results based of finite element method and meshless method analyses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2572
Author(s):  
Stefano Rosso ◽  
Federico Uriati ◽  
Luca Grigolato ◽  
Roberto Meneghello ◽  
Gianmaria Concheri ◽  
...  

Additive Manufacturing (AM) brought a revolution in parts design and production. It enables the possibility to obtain objects with complex geometries and to exploit structural optimization algorithms. Nevertheless, AM is far from being a mature technology and advances are still needed from different perspectives. Among these, the literature highlights the need of improving the frameworks that describe the design process and taking full advantage of the possibilities offered by AM. This work aims to propose a workflow for AM guiding the designer during the embodiment design phase, from the engineering requirements to the production of the final part. The main aspects are the optimization of the dimensions and the topology of the parts, to take into consideration functional and manufacturing requirements, and to validate the geometric model by computer-aided engineering software. Moreover, a case study dealing with the redesign of a piston rod is presented, in which the proposed workflow is adopted. Results show the effectiveness of the workflow when applied to cases in which structural optimization could bring an advantage in the design of a part and the pros and cons of the choices made during the design phases were highlighted.


Author(s):  
Maen Alkhader ◽  
Mohammad Nazzal ◽  
Karim Louca

Micro-architectured lattices are a promising subclass of cellular solids whose inner topologies can be tailored to enhance their stiffness. Generally, enhancing lattices' stiffness is achieved by increasing their connectivity. This strategy gives rise to a stiffer response by forcing lattices' ligaments to deform mainly in an axial manner. Conversely, this work is interested in developing micro-architectured lattices with enhanced stiffness, but whose cell walls deform in a flexural manner. Such structures can be more ductile and exhibit better energy mitigation abilities than their stretching dominated counterparts. Enhancing the stiffness of bending dominated lattices without increasing their connectivity can be realized by transforming them to hierarchical ones. This work explores, using experimentally verified finite element simulations, the effect of fractal-inspired hierarchy and customized nonfractal-based hierarchy on stiffness, anisotropy, and deformation mechanisms of an anisotropic bending dominated diamond lattice. Results show that fractal-inspired hierarchy can significantly enhance the stiffness of bending dominated lattices without affecting their deformation mechanisms or anisotropy level; ill-designed hierarchy can have a detrimental effect on lattice's stiffness; and customized hierarchy are more effective than fractal-inspired hierarchy in enhancing lattices' stiffness as well as can be more compatible with traditional, reliable, mass-producing manufacturing processes.


Author(s):  
Laura Daniela Vallejo Melgarejo ◽  
Jose García ◽  
Ronald G. Reifenberger ◽  
Brittany Newell

This document condenses the results obtained when 3D printing lenses and their potential use as diffraction gratings using Digital Light Processing (DLP), as an additive manufacturing technique. This project investigated the feasibility of using DLP additive manufacturing for producing custom designed lenses and gratings. DLP was identified as the preferred manufacturing technology for gratings fabrication. Diffraction gratings take advantage of the anisotropy, inherent in additive manufacturing processes, to produce a collated pattern of multiple fringes on a substrate with completely smooth surfaces. The gratings are transmissive and were manufactured with slit separations of 10, 25 and 50 μm. More than 50 samples were printed at various build angles and mechanically treated for maximum optical transparency. The variables of the irradiance equation were obtained from photographs taken with an optical microscope. These values were used to estimate theoretical irradiance patterns of a diffraction grating and compared against the experimental 3-D printed grating. The resulting patterns were found to be remarkably similar in amplitude and distance between peaks when compared to theoretical values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-497
Author(s):  
Tomislav Breški ◽  
Lukas Hentschel ◽  
Damir Godec ◽  
Ivica Đuretek

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is currently one of the most popular additive manufacturing processes due to its simplicity and low running and material costs. Support structures, which are necessary for overhanging surfaces during production, in most cases need to be manually removed and as such, they become waste material. In this paper, experimental approach is utilised in order to assess suitability of recycling support structures into recycled filament for FFF process. Mechanical properties of standardized specimens made from recycled polylactic acid (PLA) filament as well as influence of layer height and infill density on those properties were investigated. Optimal printing parameters for recycled PLA filaments are determined with Design of Experiment methods (DOE).


Author(s):  
Samir El Shawish ◽  
Leon Cizelj ◽  
Igor Simonovski

Stainless steel is a commonly used material in safety-important components of nuclear power plants. In order to study degradation mechanisms in stainless steels, like crack initiation and propagation, it is important to characterize the degree of plastic strain on microstructural level. One way to estimate local plastic strain is by measuring local crystal orientations of the scanned surfaces: the electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements on stainless steel revealed a strong correlation between the spread of crystal orientations within the individual grains and the imposed macroscopic plastic strain. Similar behavior was also reproduced by finite element simulations where stainless steel was modeled by an anisotropic elasto-plastic constitutive model. In that model the anisotropic Hill’s plasticity function for yield criteria was used and calibrated against the EBSD measurements and macroscopic tensile curve. In this work the Hill’s phenomenological model is upgraded to a more sophisticated crystal plasticity model where plastic deformation is assumed to be a sum of crystalline slips in all activated slip systems. The hardening laws of Peirce, Asaro and Needleman and of Bassani and Wu are applied in crystal plasticity theory and implemented numerically within the user subroutine in ABAQUS. The corresponding material parameters are taken from literature for 316L stainless steel. Finite element simulations are conducted on the analytical Voronoi tessellation with 100 grains and initial random crystallographic orientations. From the simulations, crystal and modified crystal deformation parameters are calculated, which quantify mean and median spread of crystal orientations within individual grains with respect to central grain orientation. The results are compared to EBSD measurements and previous simulations performed with Hill’s plasticity model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (4) ◽  
pp. 2708-2723
Author(s):  
Manuel Bopp ◽  
Arn Joerger ◽  
Matthias Behrendt ◽  
Albert Albers

Many concepts for acoustic meta materials rely on additive manufacturing techniques. Depending on the production process and material of choice, different levels of precision and repeatability can be achieved. In addition, different materials have different mechanical properties, many of which are frequency dependent and cannot easily be measured directly. In this contribution the authors have designed different resonator elements, which have been manufactured utilizing Fused Filament Fabrication with ABSplus and PLA, as well as PolyJet Fabrication with VeroWhitePlus. All structures are computed in FEA to obtain the calculated Eigenfrequencies and mode shapes, with the respective literature values for each material. Furthermore, the dynamic behavior of multiple instances of each structure is measured utilizing a 3D-Laser-Scanning Vibrometer under shaker excitation, to obtain the actual Eigenfrequencies and mode shapes. The results are then analyzed in regards to variance between different print instances, and in regards to accordance between measured and calculated results. Based on previous work and this analysis the parameters of the FEA models are updated to improve the result quality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (06) ◽  
pp. 363-367
Author(s):  
Lukas Langer ◽  
Matthias Schmitt ◽  
Georg Schlick ◽  
Johannes Schilp

Die additive Fertigung ermöglicht komplexe Geometrien und individualisierte Bauteile. Die hohen Material- und Fertigungskosten können ein Hindernis für einen wirtschaftlichen Einsatz sein. In der hybriden additiven Fertigung werden die Vorteile konventioneller sowie additiver Fertigungsverfahren kombiniert. Für eine weitere Steigerung der Wirtschaftlichkeit und Effizienz werden nichtwertschöpfende Schritte der Prozesskette identifiziert und Automatisierungsansätze entwickelt.   Additive manufacturing enables complex geometries and individualized components. However, high material and manufacturing costs can be a hindrance for economical use. Hybrid additive manufacturing combines the advantages of conventional with additive manufacturing processes. For a further increase in profitability and efficiency, non-value-adding steps in the process chain are identified and automation approaches developed.


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