Structural Design of Path Strategy for Additive Manufacturing

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This proposed project in collaboration with Altair Engineering Canada aims at studying the toolpath generation for fused filament fabrication - an additive manufacturing (AM) technology. This research will apply structural topology optimization and incorporate the requirements of part elasticity and strength in the standard toolpath planning, so that a suitable internal geometry can be produced for a specific application.The majority of AM processes fabricate parts by CNC the tool path to fill and accumulate material in the solid. There are studies found that the way of filling determines the final mechanical properties of the part. In the proposed project, topology optimization will be extended to the design of filling patterns used in AM processes. The structural properties of different filling patterns will be studied and transferred to improve the performance of built parts. This research is focused on investigating the effects of the printer's toolpath on the mechanical response of the 3D printed part to static loading conditions. Inspired by a novel structural topology optimization method based on principal stress lines (PSL), an analysis of toolpath coinciding with principal stress lines will be conducted with the goal of minimizing the part's compliance and material usage. PSL is a brand-new method that extracts the design principles from mathematics formulations and converts the high-dimensional and computational expensive optimization to a geometric design problem, so that it can be performed very efficiently and it can provide explicit design control. A FFF printer will fabricate the designed parts for experimental validation and compare it with other filling patterns and materials.This project collaboration with Altair Engineering Canada is related to manufacturing research and is of importance to Montreal (Quebec), a top international centre for aerospace, automotive, and energy industries. The design and manufacturing knowledge gained in this project will be transferred to the supporting company and provide excellent training opportunities of future's HQP in Canada.