Computational design for the wire and arc additive manufacturing process

The world has seen industrial revolutions with advancements in manufacturing technologies. The advancements in Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies will bring another revolution sooner rather than later. Nowadays, the Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) process is already used to manufacture large-scale structures such as ship...

Design for material properties of additively manufactured metals using topology optimization

In metal Additive Manufacturing (AM), the deposited material is subjected to a series of heating and cooling cycles. The locally occurring temperature extremes and cooling rates determine solid-state phase fractions, material microstructure, texture, and ultimately the local material properties. As the shape of a part determines the local...

Microstructure estimation and validation of ER110S-G steel structures produced by wire and arc additive manufacturing

Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) emerged as a manufacturing process for large scale structures with extensive form and design freedom. WAAM can be fully exploited once the relation between the transient thermal history and its relation to microstructure development and resultant mechanical properties is established. This relation...

A stress-based criterion to identify and control intersections in 2D compliance minimization topology optimization

Topology optimization typically generates designs that exhibit significant geometrical complexity, which can pose difficulties for manufacturing and assembly. The number of occurrences of an important design feature, in particular intersections, increases with geometrical complexity. Intersections are essential for load transfer in many...

Simultaneous topology and deposition direction optimization for Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing

A remarkable elastic anisotropy in plates of austenitic stainless steel produced by the Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing process is recently reported. The Young's modulus depends on the angle of orientation with respect to the material deposition direction. Here, for the first time, this anisotropy is exploited to maximize structural...

A methodology to predict the stiffness properties and buckling load of variable stiffness panels

Automated fibre placement technology has made possible to place bands of composite fibre tows along curvilinear path to create laminates with spatially varying stiffness properties called variable stiffness panels. These panels have shown improvement in stiffness properties, buckling load and post buckling failure load, over conventional...