Multidisciplinary topology optimization incorporating process-structure-property-performance relationship of additive manufacturing

Multidisciplinary topology optimization (TO) for additive manufacturing (AM) exhibits unprecedented design and manufacturing freedom as an effective lightweight methodology. In order to fully utilize the AM advantages of materialized arrangement in spatial and voxel-by-voxel digitalized printing, multidisciplinary TO for AM requires a full understanding of the process-structure-property-performance (PSPP) relationship to establish the quantitative correlation of part property and multiple process factors, including laser-, process-, and material-related parameters. This study incorporates the PSPP relationships of laser sintered material with topology optimizer so as to provide a guideline for TO collaborative AM design. The proposed workflow involves mapping functions of PSPP relationships via a data-driven approach and then optimizes the multiple process parameters and structural topology by the gradient-based algorithm. Compared with conventional optimization approaches, three case-dependent optimizations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach yielding encouraging improvements of lightweight performance. The multidisciplinary TO can be generally applied to types of AM technologies, establishing a strong linkage of physical product and digital design.