Improving Strength of 3D Printed Parts through Stress-aligned Print Paths
Using highly anisotropic Liquid Crystal Polymers
N. Faber (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Kunal Masania – Mentor (TU Delft - Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies)
Silvan Gantenbein – Graduation committee member (ETH Zürich)
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Abstract
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.