A New Hybrid Generative Design Method for Functional & Lightweight Structure Generation in Additive Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies give more and more design freedom to designers and engineers to define and fabricate highly complex functional geometries and material compositions by using advanced Design for AM (DfAM) methods, such as generative design, lattice structure configuration, and bio-inspired design. However, it is still hard for designers to realize a complex design with ensured manufacturability via the use of a single DfAM method, especially for some complex functional lightweight structures. To fully exploit the advantages of AM processes, this paper proposes a new hybrid generative design method, which combines many existing DfAM methods and printing preparation optimization methods. Firstly, functional features are designed and analyzed with the use of AM processing knowledge and numerical simulation. Then, lattice structure configuration is used to achieve a lightweight and qualified part consolidation. In this process, to avoid the cumbersome AM preprocessing stages, support point determination and bio-inspired support generation methods are integrated into the part consolidation design stage. Finally, multiple designed volumes, realized by using different methods, are combined into a complete single structure. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, a design case of a complex functional hydraulic component is presented at the end of the paper.