A Review on Topology Optimization Strategies for Additively Manufactured Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Composite Structures

Abstract

Topology Optimization (TO) recently gained importance due to the development of Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes that produce components with good mechanical properties. Among all additive manufacturing technologies, continuous fiber fused filament fabrication (CF4) can fabricate high-performance composites compared to those manufactured with conventional technologies. In addition, AM provides the excellent advantage of a high degree of reconfigurability, which is in high demand to support the immediate short-term manufacturing chain in medical, transportation, and other industrial applications. CF4 enables the fabrication of continuous fiber-reinforced composite (FRC) materials structures. Moreover, it allows us to integrate topology optimization strategies to design realizable CFRC structures for a given performance. Various TO strategies for attaining lightweight and high-performance designs have been proposed in the literature, exploiting AM’s design freedom. Therefore, this paper attempts to address works related to strategies employed to obtain optimal FRC structures. This paper intends to review and compare existing methods, analyze their similarities and dissimilarities, and discuss challenges and future trends in this field.

Structural Optimization of MicroMED Dust Analyzer

“…Within the optimization process, Altair Inspire relies on a computational method based on the material distribution technique. This process adopts the material density as the design variable and returns an optimal material distribution in a discretized reference domain [24,25]. A binary solid model is produced, and for each reference domain finite element either a unitary or null value is assigned to the design variable.…”

Mid-Infrared Silicon Nitride Metalens: Achieving High Achromaticity and Wideband Performance Trough Inverse Design Techniques

“…There are many methodologies that enhance the performance and efficiency of design that have appeared in the last decades, and it receives great attention from the researchers. One of these techniques is Topology Optimization (TO) or it's called Shape Optimization [1] [2]. Based on mathematical optimization methods and user defined space related to set of conditions, and constraints the topology optimization optimizes the material layout to finally maximize the performance and efficiency of the design.…”

“…Based on mathematical optimization methods and user defined space related to set of conditions, and constraints the topology optimization optimizes the material layout to finally maximize the performance and efficiency of the design. Topology optimization is usually related to the inverse design [3] [4], where allowing new shapes to be reversed engineered based on TO by simply determining a set of desired parameters and characteristics and let the optimizer algorithm generate a predicted solution. Inverse design with topology optimization has a great impact on enhancing the performance of the photonics devices where the configurations of photonics structures, whose geometry parameters are found by trial and error, have a major influence on performance [5]- [14].…”

Achieving local overheating and length scale control in density-based topology optimization

“…Topology optimization methods optimize the material layout, and make the specific performance indicators of the structure optimal under the condition of satisfying certain constraints. Compared with the traditional size optimization and shape optimization, they do not require an initial configuration and have a wide design space, which help engineers to propose efficient and novel conceptual design schemes, thus attracting widespread attention from the engineering community [2]. However, the configuration of the topology optimization result is complex, and the traditional manufacturing process often faces the problem of difficult or even impossible manufacturing, which has become an important bottleneck for the production of the topology optimization result.…”