Design for Additive Manufacturing Using a Master Model Approach

The introduction of Additive Manufacturing opens up possibilities for creating lighter, better and customized products. However, to take advantage of the possibilities of Additive Manufacturing, the design engineer is challenged. In this paper, a general design process for the creation of complex products is proposed and evaluated. The proposed method aims to aid a design process in which Topology Optimization (TO) is used for concept development, and the result is then interpreted into a Master Model (MM) supporting design evaluations during detailed design. At the same time as the MM is created, information regarding manufacturing is saved in a database. This makes it possible to automatically generate and export models for manufacturing or CAE analyses. A tool that uses Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) to realize the presented methodology has been developed. The tool is specialized for the creation of structural components that connect to other components in an assembly. A case study, part of an aircraft door, has been used for evaluation of the tool. The study shows that the repetitive work when interpreting the topology-optimized design could be reduced. The result comes in the form of a parametric CAD model which allows fast changes and the coupled database enables the export of models for various purposes.