Lightweight Design of Shock-Absorbing and Load-Bearing Components Based on 3D Printing Technology

Abstract

Nowadays, the redesign of new shock-absorbing load-bearing parts has gradually gained more and more focus due to the pressure of energy, environmental protection, and people’s pursuit of high-performance (light weight, excellent shock absorption, etc.) travel tools, and the development of 3D printing technology provides the possibility to design such high-performance parts. Therefore, firstly, the strength analysis of the parts is carried out by adopting Altar Inspire software, then topology optimization design is conducted in Inspire software and, finally, direct manufacturing is carried out using Aurora 3D printers. The results show that the maximum Mises equivalent stress of the shock-absorbing load-bearing components after lightweight design is not more than the material’s yield stress of 45 MPa and the safety factor (1.5) is greater than the minimum allowable safety factor (1.2); under such kind of premise, the quality is lightened by 63.82%. Moreover, since the structure of the parts becomes a bracket structure after the lightweight design, the shock absorption performance will be greatly improved. The 3D-printed parts have a series of advantages, namely bright surface, low roughness, no obvious warpage and other defects, and good molding effect, which lays solid the foundation for the mass production of high-performance shock-absorbing load-bearing parts.