Improving Strength of 3D Printed Parts through Stress-aligned Print Paths

Improving Strength of 3D Printed Parts through Stress-aligned Print Paths: Using highly anisotropic Liquid Crystal Polymers

Faber, Nick (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering; TU Delft Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies)

Masania, K. (mentor)
Gantenbein, Silvan (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2021-11-26

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has made it possible to manufacture parts whose shape complexity was unfeasible with other traditional methods by depositing material layer-wise. However, this planar layer-wise deposition strategy can be restrictive for the part's properties. However, the anisotropic behaviour can also be embraced and used as an advantage. Therefore, in this thesis a different method is implemented: the Stress-Aligned Printing method (SA), in which print-paths are oriented along the principal stress directions of a part's load case. To implement this method, a new 5-axis 3D printer was developed. An algorithm that converts results from a Topology- and Anistropy- optimization (TAO) to G-code was created. In a case study for a jet engine bracket, an improvement of 156% in ultimate tensile strength was found, while the weight was reduced from 41 g to 20 g.

3D Printing
Stress analysis
Manufacturing
nonplanar

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f67b562c-d94c-4b84-af8f-0682c7ea9017

2022-05-31

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Nick Faber