DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENT, USER-FRIENDLY DESIGN AND OPTIMISATION TOOLS FOR FREE-FORM CAD

The Hub has developed innovative design tools to drive an entirely new field of Additive Manufacturing (AM) design. The tools developed by the Hub are enabling engineers to consider functionality, micro- and macro-structure in an integrated fashion for the first time.

The team at Deakin University has created a software tool that is integrated into an ABAQUS (a finite element analysis program) solver. The software conducts a bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization, (BESO) based topology optimisation of the component. The team implemented a new graphical user interface (GUI) which makes the software simpler to use. The software is programmed with specialised 3D printing build constraints and has proven effective on complex components.

The Monash team has designed a specific tool in a computer aided design CAD software to automatically generate uniform Cartesian, radial, and conformal lattices. This tool also provides an interface for rapid finite element model generation. Several components were created and successfully 3D printed to verify the tool. Fatigue tests on bulk material and lattice structures with different surface modifications have also been performed.