Beam Structure Optimization for Additive Manufacturing based on Principal Stress Lines

Abstract

The benefits of component design with cellular structures have been demonstrated in a wide variety of applications. The recent advances in additive manufacturing and high performance computing have enabled us to design a product component with adaptive cellular structures to achieve significantly better performance. However, designing a product component with such structures, especially its shape and topology, poses significant challenges. Many approaches in topology optimization have been developed before for the purpose. In this paper, we present a novel structural optimization method based on the principal stress line analysis of a continuum domain. We first present the theoretical basis of our optimization method. We then discuss the properties of principal stress lines and their computation in a given design domain. Accordingly a novel structural optimization method is presented including size, shape and topology optimization. Related mathematical formulations and algorithms are also given for generating a beam structure with the minimum compliance. Three test cases are presented to illustrate the presented method.