Topological 6
Topological 6
Topological 6
Additive Manufacturing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/addma
Research Paper
Keywords: Additive manufacturing (AM) has been adopted by high-value-added industries to revolutionize product life
Additive manufacturing cycle performance, from advantageous design topology to functional advances. Compared with conventional
Stereolithography apparatus manufacturing methods such as tooling and molding, the design constraints induced by AM usually include
Topology optimization support structures, building direction (BD), feedstock material properties, and process parameters. These new
Material anisotropy
factors need to be considered in AM-driven product design and manufacturing. In this study, an AM-driven
Solid anisotropic material with penalization
Building direction
topology optimization method coupled with a transversely isotropic material model and solid anisotropic ma-
terial with penalization (SAMP) is proposed to establish a quantitative correlation between process-related
parameters and the mechanical properties of printed materials, further implementing such correlation for pro-
cess and topology optimization using a gradient-based algorithm. Specifically, the coordinate transformation
matrix is combined with the transversely isotropic stiffness and strength of the printed material using stereo-
lithography apparatus (SLA) to describe the elastic matrix under different BDs. Thereafter, case-dependent
product performances are investigated based on an integrated method considering the net-effect of structural
design and BD. The proposed approach can easily achieve AM-driven topology optimization of complex products
with desirable mechanical performance. Furthermore, the established topological model can be broadly applied
to complex functional part design and optimization, as well as case studies on AM-driven product evaluation.
1. Introduction selective laser melting (SLM), selective laser sintering (SLS), stereo-
lithography apparatus (SLA), and fused deposition molding (FDM),
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a revolutionary transformation of have been widely applied in the aerospace and automotive industries
design and manufacturing that is versatile and flexible for building [12–14].
three dimensional (3D) objects by digitally depositing and selectively SLA is one of the most significant AM technologies [15]. In SLA
solidifying materials through a layer-by-layer approach [1,2]. AM- process, the liquid photocurable resin converts into a solid polymer
driven topology optimization (TO) designs have been applied in aero- upon the selective ultraviolet (UV) light exposure in a two-dimensional
space engineering owing that they are lightweight and adaptable [3]. (2D) plane. The process of resin deposition and curing are repeated
TO design has made remarkable progress in practical engineering ap- layer-by-layer until the 3D components are completed [16]. The ‘green’
plications [4–6] since the pioneering works were proposed by M.P. components are usually post-cured by UV oven to enhance stiffness and
Bendsøe and N. Kikuchi [7]. Recently, the manufacturability of TO strength [17]. The high-resolution SLA is able to achieve complex
products has been strongly aided by the advanced development of AM structures such as lattice with superior dimensional accuracy [18]. In
technologies [8]. The integration of TO and AM broadens the freedom addition, an increasing number of commercially available printable
in structural design and manufacturing of end-use components [9–11]. resins are developed with a cost-effective advantage in prototyping and
Structures fabricated by AM processes, including, but not limited to, practical applications [19].
Corresponding authors at: State IJR Center of Aerospace Design and Additive Manufacturing, School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical
⁎
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2020.101406
Received 4 December 2019; Received in revised form 22 April 2020; Accepted 19 June 2020
Available online 24 June 2020
2214-8604/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
However, different combinations of process parameters result in a anisotropic materials and structures [45]. It is confirmed that the in-
large variance of products in terms of geometric accuracy and me- creasing ratio of anisotropy and the deviation of BD have a significant
chanical performances, such as stiffness, strength, and toughness. These effect on the stiffness of the optimized structures [46]. Although this
instabilities and uncertainties of product performances usually bring research counts anisotropy of materials and inspired TO design, it lacks
new challenges to obtain reliable and high-performance products with systematic methods focusing on the quantitative influences of aniso-
customized functions for end-use applications [20]. The factors of layer tropic mechanical properties on TO designs. For specific 3D printed
thickness, post-curing period, and building direction (BD) exert sig- anisotropic materials, it is essential to establish a universal method for
nificant impacts on the microstructure and dimensional accuracy of quantifying the elastic matrix, further integrating BD into the TO
SLA-printed products [21]. A 24-day aging cycle makes SLA-printed method.
specimens stiffer and more brittle than the newly printed group due to The quantitative method of anisotropic mechanical properties is
the increased cross-linking within the polymeric matrix [22]. Scanning limited for layer formed materials, which obstructs the further appli-
strategy and material selection can be developed to reduce residual cation of AM in complex structures. In addition, the conventional TO
stress [23]. BD directly affects the surface quality and mechanical approach utilize the ‘ideal’ material property and it causes the final TO
property of the tensile samples [24,25]. Post-curing operations improve design cannot achieve anticipated performance due to anisotropic me-
the mechanical performance of printed structures by UV and heat chanical behaviors. To address the above research gaps, an AM-driven
source [26]. The AM process brings unique features to the final printed optimization design method is proposed to integrate structural design
components. and AM process, which quantify the relationship between process-re-
In AM processes, the anisotropy property induced by the layer-by- lated parameters and material property and introduce property para-
layer construction process is often observed [27], which significantly meters into structural TO design. Hence, the transversely isotropic
affects the strategy of TO for the design of load-bearing structures via elastic matrix is applied to describe the mechanical coefficients corre-
AM [28]. The ‘bottom-up’ manufacturing constructs a CAD model in a sponding to SLA-printed components. Through off-axis experiments, the
layer-by-layer manner to create discrete 3D CAD models, resulting in elastic matrix is obtained using a systematic data-driven approach to
different mechanical strengths along the vertical direction and trans- predict the orientation-dependent trend of anisotropic material prop-
verse plane [29–31]. D. Feldman and A. Barbalata [32] reported that erties. The accuracy of the anisotropic model is validated by experi-
the strength of the SLA-printed components depended on the in- mental results, and the orientation-dependent functions of material
tramolecular bonding strength of the polymer chain and then enhanced properties are further implemented in structural optimization to obtain
by the cross-linkers between these longchain-macromolecules. More- designs with desirable mechanical performance. Moreover, the AM-
over, the cross-linking reaction influenced the degree of curing and was driven TO method can be generally applied to other AM technologies in
affected by layer thickness, BD, and post-curing [33]. The SLA-printed a layer-by-layer building manner.
components typically exhibit an anisotropic mechanical behavior on
account of the inhomogeneous degree of curing which is usually caused 2. Modeling and experiment
by the uncured and partially cured resins trapped within the photo-
polymer [34]. To date, although intensive efforts have been devoted to 2.1. Modeling
eliminating anisotropy from the printed components, the anisotropic
properties of printed materials are still inevitable, adversely affecting The transversely isotropic material model is proposed to instruct the
structural performance [17,21,22]. Therefore, it is necessary to con- experimental design, which provides the rationale to obtain the elastic
sider anisotropic variables induced by the layer-by-layer building pro- matrix of SLA-printed components. According to the engineering re-
cess in the AM-driven TO design. quirements, two universal optimization models are selected to design
The transversely isotropic property is the preliminary observation, case-dependent products. One model is adopted to optimize BD for
and it is well-known in long fiber-reinforced composites [35]. Thus, it specific structures for the sake of promoting mechanical performance
follows that the anisotropic elastic model of composites can be applied by simply changing the posture of parts in the printing platform. The
to quantify the BD-dependent mechanical properties. In SLA process, other model integrates the optimization of BD and structural topology
feeding materials are superimposed layer-by-layer, inducing a uniform concurrently, which improves TO designs by implementing the or-
microstructure and delaminated features among inner layers. There- ientation-dependent mechanical stiffness to utilize the AM process-in-
fore, transverse isotropy is used to describe the anisotropic behaviors of duced anisotropic effects.
3D printed components. Transversely isotropic mechanical property
was applied to the SLA-printed parts, and the experimental results 2.1.1. Anisotropic elastic material model
confirmed that TO structural designs considering anisotropic mechan- As illustrated in Fig. 1, parts are built layer-by-layer along axis z in
ical property were much stronger than traditional TO designs [36]. For the SLA system and the UV laser scans in a straight line. According to
other AM technologies, M. Domingo-Espin et al. [37] determined the the curing law of photosensitive resin, the cured shape of a single
stiffness matrix of fused deposition molding (FDM) printed material by scanning line is a parabola in the micro-scale [15]. Therefore, as shown
tensile experiments. A. Amado-Becker et al. [38] characterized and in Fig. 1(b), the cured time and cured degree of resin are different in the
modeled engineering constants of sintered Nylon 12 through ultrasound multi-line scanning process, causing mechanical properties along BD to
propagation velocity in specific directions of selective laser sintering be quite different from those in the other two directions. Micro-
(SLS) printed material. It proves that composite mechanics covers the structures of the SLA-printed components and the zoomed diagram-
anisotropy of the single-material printing, which is induced by the matic sketch of layer features are exhibited in Fig. 1(c) and (d), re-
layer-by-layer process. spectively. The alternation of inter layer and inner layer generates the
BD is an important process parameter influencing the mechanical mode of ‘strong-weak-strong’ material due to the non-uniform curing of
property, surface quality, support structures, building time, and product photo-resin. It mainly results in the anisotropic properties of SLA-
cost [39–43]. Recently, AM-driven structural TO considering BD-in- printed components.
duced anisotropic properties has been investigated to improve me- Fig. 2 plots the SLA-printed components and long fiber-reinforced
chanical performance. For considering the material anisotropy in state- composites in their local coordinate system. The positive direction of
of-the-art AM-driven TO, the numerical models have drawn more at- axis 3 represents BD and fiber orientation in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respec-
tention than experimental validation. Directional variables were in- tively. The anisotropy caused by lamination of SLA-printed components
troduced into TO formulation without experimental validation of the shows transversely isotropic mechanical behaviors like long fiber-re-
optimized designs [44]. A strength-based TO method was presented for inforced composites. Thus, the SLA-printed components can be treated
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Fig. 1. (a) Diagrammatic sketch of SLA equipment; (b) The cured cross-section of single laser scanning and multiple laser scanning; (c) Microscopic image of SLA-
printed components; (d) Schematic representation of the layered features.
as a special kind of composite material. The transversely isotropic materials in the local coordinate system (BD is the positive direction of
elasticity is introduced to describe the SLA-printed components owing axis 3) can be applied to the TO algorithm and the specific constants are
to the uniform mechanical properties in the 1–2 coordinate plane. determined by statistics characterization. However, the local coordinate
Five engineering constants that can be obtained by off-axis tensile system is not consistent with the global coordinate system if BD is
experiments to determine the elastic matrix according to elasticity changed.
theory. The flexibility matrix is formulated as follows: Euler rotation was carried out in the main direction of the printed
components, and the elastic matrix under the global coordinate system
1
was obtained through the transformative matrix. The positive and ne-
E1 gative rotating angles followed the convention of the right-handed co-
v12 1
ordinate system, and the rotation sequence was defined as around axis 1
E1 E1 firstly and then around axis 2.
v13 v13 1 The rotating order is first around axis 1 and then around axis 2. Due
sym
E1 E1 E3 to the symmetry of the transversely isotropic model, the rotation
Cm =
1 around axis 3 in the global coordinate system (BD) does not affect
0 0 0
G13 mechanical properties. Therefore, two directional variables α and β
1 (which are both in the range of -90° to +90°) were applied to describe
0 0 0 0
G13 the anisotropic direction.
1 Based on linear elasticity [47] and the derivation of the rotating
0 0 0 0 0
G12 (1) matrix [44], the elastic matrix in the global coordinate system was
obtained by Eq. (3).
The elastic matrix is given by Eq. (2):
The elastic matrices are Dm and D in the local and global coordinate Where,
systems, respectively. The elastic matrix of transversely isotropic
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
cos2 ( ) sin2 ( )sin2 ( ) sin2 ( )cos2 ( ) sin( )sin(2 ) sin(2 )sin2 ( ) sin(2 )cos( )
0 cos2 ( ) sin2 ( ) 0 sin(2 ) 0
sin2 ( ) sin2 ( )cos2 ( ) cos2 ( )cos2 ( ) sin( )sin(2 ) sin(2 )cos2 ( ) sin(2 )cos( )
sin(2 )sin( ) sin(2 )sin( )
R= 0 cos( )cos( ) sin( )cos(2 ) sin( )cos( )
2 2
sin(2 )cos( ) sin(2 )cos( )
0 sin( )cos( ) cos(2 )cos( ) sin( )sin( )
2 2
sin(2 ) sin2 ( )sin(2 ) sin(2 )cos2 ( ) sin(2 )sin(2 )
sin( )cos(2 ) cos( )cos(2 )
2 2 2 2 (4)
4
S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Table 1 to the local coordinate system. Firstly rotating -β around axis 2, and
Physical properties of the resin. then rotating -α around axis 1 in the local coordinate system, yields the
Resin parameters Magnitude final posture.
The sensitivities of material volume V with respect to the pseudo-
Critical exposure 11.5 mJ/cm2 density variable ρi and aspect directional variable θi are expressed as
Exposure 54 mJ/cm2
Penetration depth 0.16 mm V
Density 1.12 g/cm3 (25 ℃)
= vi
i (21)
Viscosity of resin 260 cps (30 ℃)
V
=0
n n i (22)
K= Ki = BTDi ( , ) Bd
i
i
(15) Throughout the program, GCMMA algorithm was applied to update
i i
the design variables and a sensitivity filtering technique was utilized to
TO considering BD can be expressed mathematically as follows: handle numerical problems such as checkerboard patterns and mesh
find: X = { 1, , n ; , }T dependency [51]. The mathematical formulations for the two types of
optimization models were established with sensitivity analysis.
1 1
min: E = F TU = U TKU
2 2
subject to: KU = F 2.2. Experimental design
V V
0 < min 1, i = 1, ,n Table 1 outlines the physical properties of the commercially avail-
i
able resin SOMOS11120 used in this study. The geometrical dimensions
-90 , 90 (16)
of tensile and compressive specimens were manufactured following the
Where V is the material volume of the whole design domain with an ISO 3167−2014 and ISO 604, respectively. The tensile specimen is il-
upper limit. ρmin is a small positive value as a lower bound of pseudo- lustrated in Fig. 3 and the compressive specimen is a cube with a di-
density, e.g., 0.001, which can avoid singularity of the global stiffness mension of 50 mm × 10 mm × 4 mm. Table 2 gives the parameters of
matrix during iteration. The rotating angles α and β distributes between the printing process. The post-curing machine equipped with the sur-
-90° and +90°. face light source and rotating platform were adopted to cure printed
Sensitivity analysis is similar to the method used in Section 2.1.2. components in an identical procedure by UV light with a power of 350
Derivatives of strain energy E are obtained in Eq. (17). The derivation is W for 2000s to ensure the uniformity of the curing degree. These parts
analogous to Eqs. (12)–(14). were printed under identical parameters except for BD. The tensile and
compressive rates were 2 mm/min.
E 1 T K
= U U As shown in Fig. 4, the tensile and compressive specimens rotate
i 2 i (17) around axis x from 0° to 90°, with the difference of 15° between ad-
Considering Eqs. (14) and (15), the sensitivity of global strain en- jacent groups. As a result, tensile and compressive experiments include
ergy for the pseudo-density variables ρi can be written as follows: seven groups, which are labeled with T and C, respectively. For ex-
ample, the tensile parts of 0° are T0°, and the corresponding compres-
N
E 1 Ki sive parts are C0°. Each batch contained six specimens.
= u iT ui
i 2 i=1 i
A VHX-6000 digital microscope was used to observe the surfaces of
BT p
Di ( ) Bd the printed components. The tensile and compressive specimens were
1 T i i
conducted by TestResources™ equipped with a 100 kN load cell to ac-
= ui ui
2 i quire the load-displacement curves. PMLAB DIC-3D system was utilized
to capture the horizontal and vertical strains of each specimen for
p
1 T i BT Di ( ) Bd i
i
= ui ui further calculating the elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio. The specific
2 i
p experimental results are shown in Section 3.1.
= Ei
i (18)
3. Result and discussion
Where Ei is the strain energy of the i-th element. The derivative of ro-
tating angles is obtained in Eqs. (19) and (20). 3.1. Tensile and compressive properties of the printed specimens
E 1 T K
= U U The surface undulation of printed specimens built in the BDs of 0°,
i 2 i
N 45°, and 90° are illustrated in Fig. 5. Three types of surfaces are ob-
1 T Ki served including top surface, side surface, and front surface, marked at
= ui ui
i=1
2 i 90°, 45°, and 0°, respectively. The top surface of 90° and the side surface
N
1 T BTDi ( , ) Bd of 0° have a similar surface roughness since they are both perpendicular
= ui ui to the BD. The top surface of 90° exhibits a ‘dot-by-dot’ undulating
i=1
2 i
N
1 T p Di ( )
= ui BT i Bd i ui
i=1
2 i i (19)
T
Di ( , ) T( ) T( )
= Dm T T ( ) + Dm T T ( )
i i i (20)
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Table 2 layer planes and the crack path is affected by the inhomogeneous
Process parameters of SLA. bonding strength, exhibiting slight fluxion. Shear failure is observed in
Process parameters Magnitude T45°.
Figs. 6 and 7 plot the load-displacement curves of tensile and
Laser power 220 mW compressive specimens. One curve is selected to represent its corre-
Radius of the laser beam 0.12 mm
sponding batch. As listed in Table 4, elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio
Laser beam wavelength 355 nm
Layer thickness 0.1 mm
are deduced from the tensile curves and DIC analysis. Poisson's ratio of
Scanning strategy XYSTA each specimen is around 0.4. The elastic modulus of T0° and T90° are
Scanning interval 0.1 mm approximately equal, and Poisson's ratio of T0° and T90° are both 0.37.
Scanning speed 6500 mm/s It proves the applicability of the transversely isotropic model for the
Time of UV post-curing 2000 s
printed material. The specimens in T0° and T90° possess similar elastic
modulus and Poisson's ratio, while T45° possess lower elastic modulus
pattern due to the gridded scanning path. The maximum height of the and higher Poisson's ratio than these in T0° and T90°. The specimens of
profiles (Rz) is 15.2 μm. The front surface of 0° and the side surface of T45° exhibited 6.6 % lower average elastic modulus compared to the
90° show clear layered features where Rz is 18.49 μm. The side surface specimens of T0°, which can be explained by the difference of shear
of 45° possesses a zigzag-shaped undulation. A sawtooth curve is dis- moduli of materials between the inner-layer and inter-layer space.
covered in the edges along the axis x, where Rz is 27.88 μm. For the side Furthermore, the specimens of T0° exhibited 23.8 % larger ultimate
surfaces of 0° and 45°, the changed angle between the surface normal tensile stress compared to the specimens of T90°.
direction and BD makes ‘dot-by-dot’ transition gradually to ‘line-by- The specimens in groups T0°–T45° exhibit similar strain at break,
line’ undulation, which is similar to observations by P. Delfs and M. however, less plastic deformation is observed in specimens of
Töws [52] for layer-by-layer AM processes. Surface quality that varies T60°–T90°. Strain at break is below 5% in T60°–T90° and nominal strain
with BD causes irregular undulations at different locations of the at break is above 10 % in T0°–T45°, which is at least a factor of 2 in
printed complex structures, especially for the lattice with tiny rods. It is T60°–T90°. As the strong ductility of inner-layer materials is observed,
possible to predict that the printed tensile specimens exhibit different specimens of T0°–T45° possess significant plastic mechanical behaviors
crack propagation modes due to irregular stress concentration. due to the inner layer being pulled. Specimens of T60°–T90° are mainly
After the off-axis experiments, the fracture shape and surface of pulled perpendicular to the inter layer, where the bonding strength is
specimens in T0°, T45°, and T90° were examined under the microscope. weak. Therefore, specimens of T0° and T90° exhibits the maximum and
Table 3 lists the macroscopic images. Vertical and horizontal building minimum ultimate tensile stress and strain, respectively.
lines are visible in specimens T0° and T90°, respectively. As shown in Table 5 lists the compressive strength. The compressive strength of
Fig. 6, for T0° and T45°, the break occurs after yielding whereas for each specimen is expressed as a negative value to distinguish tensile
T90° it occurs prior to yielding. strength from compressive strength. It can be concluded that the dif-
The fracture surface of T0° is uneven due to the plastic fracture with ference of the maximum and minimum compressive strength is 27.1 %
the nominal strain at break of 17 % ± 1.7 % and Rz of 179.82 μm. The and both the tensile and compressive strength are orientation-depen-
fracture surface of T90° is quite smooth compared to the one with the dent with a maximum gap of 20 % between 0° and 90°.
strain at break of 1 % ± 0.1 % and Rz of 10.27 μm. Moreover, T0° Fig. 8 illustrates that the tensile strength decreases with the increase
possesses a large plastic deformation and rough failure surface, and of building angle while the compressive strength shows the opposite
T90° exhibits a small strain at break and smooth failure surface, cor- trend. Since the compressive strength is negative, both trends represent
responding to ductile fracture and brittle fracture, respectively. T45° that the tensile and compressive capability of the printed material are
exhibits an inclined section, and the fracturing angle is 45°. In addition, declined owing that the inner-layer material possesses higher tensile
delamination is observed clearly in the rough fracture section. The and compressive capabilities than the inter-layer material. The inner-
layered feature and surface roughness dominate the fracture mode. In layer region plays the role of ‘skeleton’, enhancing mechanical strength.
the inter layer, the bonding strength is weak. The initiation point of The longitudinal tensile and compressive direction begins with a hor-
fracture exists at the defects inside the specimens and zigzag-shaped izontal direction, then transforming gradually to vertical. Therefore,
surface depressions of which ordinarily lead to the stress concentration. T0° and C0° exhibit the maximum tensile and compressive strength. For
The uniform in-plane fracture and smooth fracture surface of T90° are T90° and C90°, the inner-layer and inter-layer region bear the uni-
able to be explained by the crack propagation in the inter-layer plane. directional load respectively, thus the loading capacity is limited by the
However, the crack in T0° propagates through inner-layer and inter- inter-layer inferior material. The strengths of other groups within the 0°
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
and 90°, depend on the angle between the principal stress direction and
BD.
In this section, an empirical study is performed. The specimens were
printed in different BDs, and the surface roughness and layer features of
specimens were observed under a microscope after off-axis experi-
ments. The tensile specimens exhibit different failure modes and surface
morphology of fracture as the irregular surface undulation affects the
stress concentration distribution and crack propagation. The layered
feature and surface roughness dominate the stiffness and strength of the
SLA-printed components, inducing the transverse isotropy. A function is
established to describe the orientation-dependent properties for the
AM-driven TO.
Table 3
Fracture characteristics of tensile parts.
Specimens Fracture shape Fracture surface
T0°
T45°
T90°
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Table 4
Experimental data of tensile specimens.
Specimens Elastic Poisson’s Ultimate tensile (Nominal) Strain
modulus ± SD ratio ± SD stress ± SD at break ± SD
(E, MPa) (MPa)
8
S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Fig. 10. (a) Boundary condition and external force (b)The MBB beam.
Fig. 11. Convergence curves:(a) Strain energy with different initial values (b) α and β.
9
S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Fig. 13. (a) Printed parts in worktable (b) Static boundary condition.
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Fig. 16. Convergence curves (a) Strain energy with specific initial values (b) α and β.
Table 7 Fig. 18. L-shaped beam with force and boundary conditions.
Five special cases.
Case Strain energy (J) α (°) β (°)
to ensure consistency of surface quality and volume of the seven L-
A 87.18 0 0
B 86.56 −90 −50.2 shaped beams.
C 88.12 −90 9.4 Table 8 summarizes the BD optimization results of six cases and the
D 85.98 −52 −32 concurrent optimization results are demonstrated in Fig. 19. The
E 88.95 −90 −83.4 maximum and minimum volumes of the seven structures are 48,193
mm3 and 47,746 mm3 respectively, which means the volume difference
is less than 1%. The concurrent optimized structure possesses the
aims to utilize the advantage of anisotropy in the product design stage.
minimum strain energy while Case D has the maximum value. The
The geometric dimension, force, and boundary conditions are
maximum Von Mises Stress of each case is recorded and it is located at
shown in Fig. 18. The unit of distance is millimeter, and the thickness
zone 2 due to the stress concentration. Case D possesses higher max-
along the axis y is 15 mm. The 3D model was meshed into 137,090
imum stress and lower stiffness than other cases since the change in BD
elements in Altair HyperWorks®, containing 128,090 elements in the
influences structural configuration and objective stiffness and stress. As
design domain. The non-design domain of the lower-left corner is fixed
shown in Fig. 19, zone 1 and 2 of the concurrent optimized structure
as the boundary condition and the L-shaped beam is loaded by a ver-
possess different patterns compared to Case A to F. For Case A and
tical surface force F = 490 N. The volume fraction is less than 25 % and
concurrent optimized structure, zone 1 and 2 are symmetric about x-z
then the FE model is analyzed in ANSYS®. The sensitivity information is
plane while they are asymmetric for Case B to F owing that the material
input to Boss-Quattro® [50]. Sensitivity filtering was used to avoid
property is asymmetric about the x-z plane. In addition, zone 1 and 2
mesh dependency and checkboard patterning, and the filter radius is
determine stiffness and failure mode for each model. For the concurrent
two times the element size.
optimized structures, the material aggregates in the middle of the beam
Structural TO was performed in a range of different BDs due to the
and the evolution of directional variables prefer to place the main
effects of BD on the stiffness of structures. The FEA models possess
bearing rod in the inner-layer plane, eliminating the tiny branch and
zigzag surfaces that cannot be printed directly. The optimized struc-
centralizing the side rods. For traditional optimization problems, the
tures were smoothed to 3D models that can be directly fabricated.
direction of anisotropy should be carefully pre-selected before TO.
Seven STL models are provided in the supplementary materials
Fig. 20 plots the convergence curves of the strain energy. As shown
STL_MODEL. The identical parameters are applied for the post-process
in the figure, the strain energy declines quickly before iteration 30 and
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Table 8
Optimization results of six cases.
Case α, β Structural topologies Strain Maximum Von Volume
energy Mises Stress (mm3)
(mJ) (MPa)
E 60,0 2689.4 52.09 47981 converges to the final value after iteration 60. The strain energy of
concurrent optimization is 2562.5 mJ, which is almost 35.9 % below
the initial design. In addition, it converges the minimum objective value
compared to Case A to F.
Fig. 21 illustrates the strain energy of Cases A–F and concurrent
optimization. Compared with Cases A–F, the strain energy obtained by
TO considering BD is small. The evidence indicates that the introduc-
tion of BD changes the structural topology and the direction of aniso-
tropy, fully exploiting material anisotropy and matching the design and
manufacturing stages. For empirical decision-making, the initial angle
F 75,0 2639.3 55.60 47904 may result in local minima when the mapping surface possesses several
peaks and troughs. The potential solution is arranging initial BD evenly.
In addition, it is important to investigate the consistency of theoretical
prediction and experimental validation.
In Fig. 22(a), The two models are printed with identical parameters
and post-processing as outlined in Section 2.2. The specimens were
validated under the specific boundary condition using TestResources™
equipped with a 5 kN load cell with a loading rate of 2 mm/min. Failure
modes, load, and displacement were recorded and plotted, as shown in
Fig. 22(b). Stiffness and strength can be deduced from the load-dis-
placement curves. The concurrent optimization result possesses better
mechanical properties than Case A. The stiffness increases by 8.9 %
12
S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Fig. 22. (a). The printed structures (b). Load-displacement curves with failure modes.
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S. Li, et al. Additive Manufacturing 36 (2020) 101406
Declaration of Competing Interest [23] J.W. Stansbury, M.J. Idacavage, 3D printing with polymers: challenges among ex-
panding options and opportunities, Dent. Mater. 32 (2016) 54–64, https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.dental.2015.09.018.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial [24] W.M. Wang, C. Zanni, L. Kobbelt, Improved surface quality in 3D printing by op-
timizing the printing direction, Comput. Graph. Forum, Wiley Online Library, 2016,
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ- pp. 59–70.
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