Optimized Build Plate Design Tool for Metal Laser Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing

TDA’s proposed work addresses the target STTR topic objectives of developing an intelligent decision support system to (a) ease the burden of experiments, (b) mitigate the process-induced residual stresses and distortions, (c) include advanced optimization features and (d) help the user in selecting the best part orientation & support for the selected AM platform.Based on our team’s expertise in topology optimization, modeling and design for additive manufacturing and high-performance computing our approach consists of: (a) finding an optimal build orientation to minimize geometry-based cost functions supported by expert advisory system by considering geometrical features of complex components, (b) finding an optimal support structure to minimize thermomechanical performance functions related with part quality and productivity, (c) developing fast thermo-mechanical AM simulations - reduce the computational cost of analysisThe proposed work will include experimental validation to confirm the developed optimization algorithms.