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Achieving self-supported enclosed voids and machinable support structures in topology optimization for additive manufacturing

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Abstract

This paper proposes a topology optimization formulation for additive manufacturing, in which the part, supports and their machining directions are simultaneously optimized. The part and supports are represented by two groups of density fields. The support structures are optimized for heat dissipation efficiency by solving a pseudo heat conduction problem under heat flux boundary loading and constraining the maximum temperature. The temperature constraint allows us to obtain self-supporting overhangs or non-self-supporting overhangs with support structures underneath. During the optimization, the support structures are further filtered by the solution fields from the advection-diffusion equations to ensure their accessibility to the machining tools. Based on the developed formulation, the optimized support structures would be distributed in the machinable regions of the part to enhance heat transfer in the manufacturing process. The unmachinable regions of the part, including enclosed voids, are self-supported for additive manufacturing. The sensitivity of the manufacturing constraint with respect to the design variables of the part, supports and the machining directions is derived through the adjoint method. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed formulation through several examples in 2D and 3D cases.

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Funding

The work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12102375, No. 52005421), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (No. 2023J01045), and Independent Innovation Foundation of AECC (No. ZZCX-2018-017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Aerospace Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Cunfu Wang, Chenxu Wang, Wenyuan Yu, Cheng Yan & Yancheng You

  2. TaiHang Laboratory, 619 Jicui Street, Tianfu New District, Chengdu, 610213, Sichuan, China

    Liming Lei

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  1. Cunfu Wang
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  4. Liming Lei
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Correspondence to Cheng Yan.

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Replication of results

All results in the manuscript are obtained in the open-source finite element platform FEniCS. The necessary data for replicating the results has been presented in the manuscript. The readers can contact the corresponding author for further implementation details and data.

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Wang, C., Wang, C., Yu, W. et al. Achieving self-supported enclosed voids and machinable support structures in topology optimization for additive manufacturing. Struct Multidisc Optim 67, 142 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-024-03858-z

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