12 - Multimaterial 4D printing simulation using a grasshopper plugin

Abstract

In the wake of the emergence of additive manufacturing (AM), there has been the advent of 4D printing. It is basically AM with stimuli-responsive materials. Objects so manufactured are then capable of evolving in a programmed way in response to specific energy stimulation. While 4D printing is a hot research topic regarding manufacturing, materials, and stimuli control, relatively fewer works have been targeted at accompanying this new manufacturing trend from a design perspective. In comparison with the Design for Additive Manufacturing literature (which is prolific in design methods, design tools, and the likes), the Design for 4D Printing literature is rather scarce. Looking at 4D printing from a design perspective is part of the road to its broader dissemination and particularly to its industrial adoption. In this chapter, a voxel-based computational design tool for 4D printing is presented. The tool encompasses modeling, simulation, automated design, and manufacturing of heterogeneous objects made of shape-changing materials. At the core of the proposed toolbox is the vision that material heterogeneity is the key to instill a desired behavior or functionality in an object. A vision similar to how the arrangement of four chemical bases defines an organism’s DNA and ultimately its traits. The tool is based on the graphical algorithm editor Grasshopper, a plugin of the CAD software Rhinoceros 3D.