Integrated Methodology for Designing Structures coming from Additive Layer Manufacturing

The potential of Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) is high, with a whole new set of manufacture parts with unseen complexity being offered. However, the process has limitations such as minimum member sizes or overhang constraints, which should be taken into account in the design. Therefore, the combination of Topology Optimization (TO) with ALM can be seen as an advantageous one [1]. Nevertheless, the connection between TO and ALM represents a non-trivial step that requires a robust methodology. In this sense, a proposal towards an integrated robust methodology is shown and demonstrated in the present paper. The TO step is available and accounts for minimum member size (Heaviside projection) and/or overhang constraint (layer-wise simplified fabrication model) [2]. The algorithm uses a regular cubic approach with precomputed stiffness matrices for efficient assembling and solving, where the mentioned transition between TO and ALM is also available via Laplacian smoothing. The source code is available on GitHub in the Trimesh module, as all the other auxiliary tools, namely geometry import and export capabilities, visualization capabilities and interactive boundary conditions selection [3]. Finally, a 3D case-study is shown as a way to illustrate the potential of the prosed integrated process.