Grant: Engage Grants Program

Additive Manufacturing (AM) removes some of the massive traditional constrains in the engineering design domain and potentially result in revolutionary changes of methodologies in developing mechanical products and components. One of these changes is predicted to be a transfer of topological design categories from using combinations of primitive geometric elements such as planes, cubes, cones, and cylinders to more sophisticated shapes with significant geometric complexities. This has been a dream for designers over centuries which was difficult to achieve due to manufacturing limitations. However, although AM potentially eliminates many of manufacturing limitations, it introduces few other constrains to design, including the effect of slicing, built orientation, geometric and dimensional accuracy and surface quality requirement, and the need for supports structures. This research project focuses on the new opportunities and constrains to develop new generation of design methodologies in topology optimization for AM products. Our approach in developing AM design methodology is to utilize Finite Element Analysis (FEA) - based topology optimization solutions imposed to formulated AM-based constrains. ANSYS is known as a strong and reliable FEA engine presented and supported by SimuTech Group Inc. and utilized by many leading industrial sectors in Canada. It is aimed todevelop a design module that potentially can utilize ANSYS finite element analysis platform to optimize topology of AM products. The main challenge in this project is to formulate the AM imposed constrains to define the topology optimization problem. Next, optimization algorithm needs to be developed that uses FEA results produced dynamically by the nested ANSYS solver and seeks for the optimum topology of the mechanical component given a set of static loading and boundary condition. This topology optimization is very useful when it is desired to have mechanical products with minimum cost and weight while the importantquality requirement including geometric precision, dimensional accuracy, and surface integrity are maintained. The results of this project can be used by many engineering sectors including automotive, aerospace industries.