Guidelines for AM part consolidation

This paper makes a comparative study about the structural performances of the consolidated AM (additive manufacturing) parts and the multi-piece assemblies. Generally, it is recognised that AM part consolidation can improve the structural performance compared to the traditional multi-piece assembly. However, this may not be true given that the AM materials are directionally weakened, especially in the build direction (BD). Hence, the comparative study performed in this work will provide some conclusions and at the same time, these conclusions could be valuable guidelines for designing AM part consolidation. For implementation details, the level set topology optimisation method will be applied to optimising the multi-piece assembly with rigid joints and the AM part with weakened material properties; and the same design domain will be shared in order to make a fair comparison. A set of different joint positions and material weakening levels will be studied in order to get comprehensive conclusions.