Optimal design of shell-graded-infill structures by a hybrid MMC-MMV approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid MMC-MMV optimization method for designing shell-graded-infill structures in additive manufacturing, enabling explicit geometry control and simultaneous optimization of shell boundaries and infill distribution.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid optimization approach that explicitly models and optimizes shell-graded-infill structures with fewer design variables.

Findings

Effective optimization of shell-graded-infill geometries demonstrated

Simultaneous boundary and infill optimization achieved

Numerical examples validate the approach's effectiveness

Abstract

In the present work, a hybrid MMC-MMV approach is developed for designing additive manufacturing-oriented shell-graded-infill structures. The key idea is to describe the geometry of a shell-graded-infill structure explicitly using some geometry parameters. To this end, a set of morphable voids is adopted to describe the boundary of the coating shell, while a set of morphable components combing with a coordinate perturbation technique are introduced to represent the graded infill distribution. Under such treatment, both the crisp boundary of the coating shell and the graded infill can be optimized simultaneously, with a small number of design variables. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.