An Application Process of Additive Manufacturing Based on Digital Simulation and BESO Topology Optimization

Abstract

Additive manufacturing has now entered a wide range of areas and plays an important role. There are many factors affecting the application of additive manufacturing, such as the amount of printing supplies, print product strength, print speed and so on. These factors potentially hinder the application of additive manufacturing in some typical areas, such as spare parts producing for on-orbit maintenance in space environments. Based on the improvement of the above factors, an additive manufacturing application process based on topology optimization of variable density method and digital simulation was proposed. Print volume of product was used as an explicit constraint, and the design goal of the product, such as strength and modal, was transformed into implicit stress constraints in the topology optimization of three-dimensional model, then stress constraints were independently extracted for secondary verification, finally the checked model is put into print. This process saves computational resources during optimization calculations and printing time, reduces print product’s weight, conserves supplies, and meets initial strength or modal design goals. This process greatly exploited the advantages of additive manufacturing in product manufacturing and made up for the shortcomings of traditional manufacturing processes that can not directly output a relatively abstract model after topological optimization. Under the constraints of saving material and increasing strength, it becomes optimum solution in the manufacture of specific products.