Manufacturing-oriented topology optimization has been extensively studied the past two decades, in particular for the conventional manufacturing methods, for example, machining and injection molding or casting. Both design and manufacturing engineers have benefited from these efforts because of the close-to-optimal and friendly-to-manufacture design solutions. Recently, additive manufacturing (AM) has received significant attention from both academia and industry. AM is characterized by producing geometrically complex components layer-by-layer, and greatly reduces the geometric complexity restrictions imposed on topology optimization by conventional manufacturing. In other words, AM can make near-full use of the freeform structural evolution of topology optimization. Even so, new rules and restrictions emerge due to the diverse and intricate AM processes, which should be carefully addressed when developing the AM-specific topology optimization algorithms. Therefore, the motivation of this perspective paper is to summarize the state-of-art topology optimization methods for a variety of AM topics. At the same time, this paper also expresses the authors' perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in these topics. The hope is to inspire both researchers and engineers to meet these challenges with innovative solutions.

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Current and future trends in topology optimization for additive manufacturing

Porous structures such as trabecular bone are widely seen in nature. These structures are lightweight and exhibit strong mechanical properties. In this paper, we present a method to generate bone-like porous structures as lightweight infill for additive manufacturing. Our method builds upon and extends voxel-wise topology optimization. In particular, for the purpose of generating sparse yet stable structures distributed in the interior of a given shape, we propose upper bounds on the localized material volume in the proximity of each voxel in the design domain. We then aggregate the local per-voxel constraints by their p -norm into an equivalent global constraint, in order to facilitate an efficient optimization process. Implemented on a high-resolution topology optimization framework, our results demonstrate mechanically optimized, detailed porous structures which mimic those found in nature. We further show variants of the optimized structures subject to different design specifications, and we analyze the optimality and robustness of the obtained structures.

/pdf/infill-optimization-for-additive-manufacturing-approaching-51ckd7qa67.pdf

Infill Optimization for Additive Manufacturing—Approaching Bone-Like Porous Structures

Additive manufacturing (AM) has developed rapidly since its inception in the 1980s. AM is perceived as an environmentally friendly and sustainable technology and has already gained a lot of attention globally. The potential freedom of design offered by AM is, however, often limited when printing complex geometries due to an inability to support the stresses inherent within the manufacturing process. Additional support structures are often needed, which leads to material, time and energy waste. Research in support structures is, therefore, of great importance for the future and further improvement of additive manufacturing. This paper aims to review the varied research that has been performed in the area of support structures. Fifty-seven publications regarding support structure optimization are selected and categorized into six groups for discussion. A framework is established in which future research into support structures can be pursued and standardized. By providing a comprehensive review and discussion on support structures, AM can be further improved and developed in terms of support waste in the future, thus, making AM a more sustainable technology.

https://www.mdpi.com/2504-4494/2/4/64/pdf

Support Structures for Additive Manufacturing: A Review

Cambridge University Press. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Paperback. 480 pages. Numerical analysis presents different faces to the world. For mathematicians it is a bona fide mathematical theory with an applicable flavour. For scientists and engineers it is a practical, applied subject, part of the standard repertoire of modelling techniques. For computer scientists it is a theory on the interplay of computer architecture and algorithms for real-number calculations. The tension between these standpoints is the driving force of this book, which presents a rigorous account of the fundamentals of numerical analysis of both ordinary and partial differential equations. The exposition maintains a balance between theoretical, algorithmic and applied aspects. This new edition has been extensively updated, and includes new chapters on emerging subject areas: geometric numerical integration, spectral methods and conjugate gradients. Other topics covered include multistep and Runge-Kutta methods; finite difference and finite elements techniques for the Poisson equation; and a variety of algorithms to solve large, sparse algebraic systems. This item ships from multiple locations. Your book may arrive from Roseburg,OR, La Vergne,TN. Paperback.

A First Course in the Numerical Analysis of Differential Equations: Stiff equations

Multifunctional Mechanical Metamaterials Based on Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Lattices

Recent work has demonstrated that the interior material layout of a 3D model can be designed to make a fabricated replica satisfy application-specific demands on its physical properties, such as resistance to external loads. A widely used practice to fabricate such models is by layer-based additive manufacturing (AM), which however suffers from the problem of adding and removing interior supporting structures. In this paper, we present a novel method for generating application-specific infill structures on rhombic cells so that the resultant structures can automatically satisfy manufacturing requirements on overhang-angle and wall-thickness. Additional supporting structures can be avoided entirely in our framework. To achieve this, we introduce the usage of an adaptive rhombic grid, which is built from an input surface model. Starting from the initial sparse set of rhombic cells, via numerical optimization techniques an objective function can be improved by adaptively subdividing the rhombic grid and thus adding more walls in cells. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method for generating interior designs in the applications of improving mechanical stiffness and static stability.

Self-supporting rhombic infill structures for additive manufacturing

This paper introduces a perceptual model for determining 3D printing orientations. Additive manufacturing methods involving low-cost 3D printers often require robust branching support structures to prevent material collapse at overhangs. Although the designed shape can successfully be made by adding supports, residual material remains at the contact points after the supports have been removed, resulting in unsightly surface artifacts. Moreover, fine surface details on the fabricated model can easily be damaged while removing supports. To prevent the visual impact of these artifacts, we present a method to find printing directions that avoid placing supports in perceptually significant regions. Our model for preference in 3D printing direction is formulated as a combination of metrics including area of support, visual saliency, preferred viewpoint and smoothness preservation. We develop a training-and-learning methodology to obtain a closed-form solution for our perceptual model and perform a large-scale study. We demonstrate the performance of this perceptual model on both natural and man-made objects.

Perceptual models of preference in 3D printing direction

Three-dimensional measurement of shiny or reflective surface is a challenging issue for optical-based instrumentations. In this paper, we present a novel structured light approach for direct measurement of shiny target so as to skip the coating preprocedure. In comparison with traditional image-intensity-based structured light coding strategies like sinusoidal and line patterns, strip edges not raw image intensities are encoded in the illuminated patterns. With strip edges generally better preserved than individual image intensity in the image data in the presence of surface reflections, such a coding strategy is more robust. To remove the periodic ambiguity within strip patterns, traditional Gray code patterns are adopted. To localize the strip edges more precisely, both positive and negative strip patterns are used. An improved zero-crossing feature detector that has subpixel accuracy is proposed for strip-edge localization. The experimental setup is configured with merely an off-the-shelf pico-projector and a camera. Extensive experiments including accuracy evaluation, comparison with previous structured light algorithms, and the reconstruction of some real shiny objects are shown to demonstrate the system's accuracy and endurance against reflective nature of surfaces.

An Accurate and Robust Strip-Edge-Based Structured Light Means for Shiny Surface Micromeasurement in 3-D

This paper introduces a novel method for designing personalized orthopedic casts which are aware of thermal-comfort while satisfying mechanical requirements. Our pipeline starts from thermal images taken by an infrared camera, by which the distribution of thermal-comfort sensitivity is generated on the surface of a 3D scanned model. We formulate a hollowed Voronoi tessellation pattern to represent the covered region for a web-like cast design. The pattern is further optimized according to the thermal-comfort sensitivity calculated from thermal images. Working together with a thickness variation method, we generate a solid model for a personalized cast maximizing both thermal comfort and mechanical stiffness. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, 3D printed models of personalized casts are tested on body parts of different individuals.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3126594.3126600

Thermal-Comfort Design of Personalized Casts

We present a method to design the deformation behavior of 3D printed models by an interactive tool, where the variation of bending elasticity at different regions of a model is realized by a change in shell thickness. Given a soft material to be used in 3D printing, we propose an experimental setup to acquire the bending behavior of this material on tubes with different diameters and thicknesses. The relationship between shell thickness and bending elasticity is stored in an echo state network using the acquired dataset. With the help of the network, an interactive design tool is developed to generate non-uniformly hollowed models to achieve desired bending behaviors. The effectiveness of this method is verified on models fabricated by different 3D printers by studying whether their physical deformation can match the designed target shape.

Xiaoting Zhang

Papers

Self-supporting rhombic infill structures for additive manufacturing

Perceptual models of preference in 3D printing direction

An Accurate and Robust Strip-Edge-Based Structured Light Means for Shiny Surface Micromeasurement in 3-D

Thermal-Comfort Design of Personalized Casts

Data-driven bending elasticity design by shell thickness