Interactive infill topology optimisation guided by user drawn patterns

Widespread use of topology optimisation as a design tool for additive manufacturing faces major inhibiting obstacles, such as high computational costs and complexity, concern for other failure modes, and manufacturability. Interactive infill topology optimisation presents an alternative approach to circumvent some of these barriers. The novel contribution of the present work prompts the user to draw a tailored infill pattern, specify regions of interest to locate the infill, and control how strictly the pattern is replicated in the material layout of the design using appearance constraints. This approach improves engineering metrics not directly included in the optimisation formulation by incorporating the user’s engineering experience, thereby avoiding increased computational costs, parameter tuning, and numerical artifacts associated with complex objective functions and constraints. Two 2D benchmark examples increase the linear buckling resistance and energy absorption, respectively, and a 2.5D example minimises compliance while reducing the quantity of overhang supports for additive manufacturing.