Isogeometric topology optimization for infill designs of porous structures with stress minimization in additive manufacturing

Porous structures by additive manufacturing have fascinating and compelling performance compared with solid structures. The stress-related porous infill designs which could greatly mitigate the effects of the intrinsic high residual stress in additive manufacturing process have gained increasing attention. In the current work, we propose a promising Isogeometric Topology Optimization (ITO) method for porous infill structures with stress minimization to avoid the occurrence of stress concentrations in additive manufacturing. The IsoGeometric Analysis (IGA) and induced p-norm aggregation are utilized to develop a stress-minimization topology description model for infill design, which can remove the mesh dependency and offer benefits for improving numerical accuracy and convergence stability. We also introduced global volume constraints to easily control the usage of material and eliminate the over-fine structures affecting the printing accuracy. Several numerical examples are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed ITO method on porous infill designs with stress minimization. The laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technique is employed to fabricate several prototypes, and the performance are evaluated by experiments. The advancements of our work are demonstrated effectively, which is adapted for additive manufacturing and practical application.

Automated summary

In this work, a promising Isogeometric Topology Optimization (ITO) method is proposed for stress-minimizing porous infill structures in additive manufacturing. The method combines IsoGeometric Analysis (IGA) and induced p-norm aggregation to eliminate mesh dependency and improve numerical accuracy and convergence stability. Global volume constraints are also introduced to control material usage and eliminate over-fine structures affecting printing accuracy. Numerical examples and experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.