Material Selection Methodology for Additive Manufacturing Applications

Abstract

As Additive Manufacturing (AM) opens new doors to manufacture products that are costlier to manufacture by traditional methods, material selection for feedstock in AM processes poses significant importance. Although there has been research advances in material usage in AM technologies, optimal selection of AM materials has not been thoroughly researched. As there are many candidate materials for any application starting with a range of polymers, the most common AM material’s type, metals and ceramics, this paper introduces an integrated heuristic and mathematical algorithms for optimizing the material selection for different AM applications. In addition, a material selection matrix is developed to rank recommended materials based on weighted criteria depending on the application. The developed matrix through the selection algorithms enable AM users to make informed material selection decisions.