LIGHT WEIGHTING OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURED PARTS FOR AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTION APPLICATIONS THROUGH TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES

Rapidly enhancing engineering techniques to manufacture components in quick turnaround time have gained importance in recent time. Manufacturing strategies like Additive Manufacturing (AM) are a key enabler for achieving them. Unlike traditional manufacturing techniques such as injection molding, casting etc., AM unites advanced materials, machines, and software which will be critical for Industry 4.0. Successful application of AM involves a specific combination and understanding of these three key elements. In this paper the AM approach used is Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). Since material costs contribute to 60% of the overall FDM costs, it becomes a necessity to optimize the material consumption of the produced parts. This paper reports case studies of 3D printed parts used in an Automobile plant’s production aids, which utilize computational methods(CAE), topology optimization and FDM constrains (build directions) to manufacture the part in the most optimal way. These methodologies were used to validate the current operating conditions, optimize the design, increase the stiffness of the original part and reduce the material costs. The newly optimized designs were verified by successfully passing the Finite Element Analysis tests. A scaled down model has been printed and tested for form, function and fit. To validate the light weighting of optimized parts, a comparison study with initial design without optimization is also presented. The results showed that by uniting materials, processes and the digital data(CAD) in initial design phase has proven to be highly beneficial. Testing this methodology with different load cases in plant conditions and to co-relate with proposed approach can be considered for future works.