ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
which is the bread and butter approach to design, McDevitt says. “Tis involves shelling out the inside of a part and filling it with a lattice to give structural integrity but without the weight of the shelled material. Te unique difference with our software is enabling engineers to easily vary the shell thickness in different areas of a part in line with its requirements.” Te next area in which the software
excels is its conformal ribbing capability, which allows engineers to place ribs on the outside of parts to provide extra stiffness in not just the X- and Y-axis, but that conform wholly to the part’s surface. Lastly, the software enables designers to create perforations in a part to remove unnecessary material, a feature that is particularly useful in the creation of components like aircraft frames. “All these operations are easily
achieved through the software’s capability to automate and encode the design workflow, complemented by field-driven design,” McDevitt adds. “Tis capability allows engineers to take simulation or experimental results of the stress and strain placed on a part during operation, and use this information to automatically place perforations and varied shell thicknesses throughout the part to ensure optimal performance.”
ADVANCED LIGHTWEIGHTING CONCEPTS One additive manufacturing-enabled approach to lightweighting that is gathering pace in several sectors is multifunctionality, McDevitt observes. “What we mean by this is that the lightweighting strategy
Variable shell thicknesses can be applied to reduce weight
is deployed to serve more than one performance requirement,” he explains. “For example, a company looking at redesigning a heat exchanger may want the part to do more than just its primary function – to exchange heat – but also to provide support or structural integrity to another part. Maybe the heat exchanger is part of a bracket that holds up an engine, or needs to be able to support another part hanging off of it. Tis is where additive manufacturing can be used to design and build a highly engineered part that is both lightweight but also strong enough
Lattice structures can be varied to tune their physical behaviour
to provide structural integrity to other components.” Another advanced lightweighting concept made possible with 3D printing is architected materials built on lattice structures. “With additive manufacturing, we have the power to vary a lattice structure in order to tune the physical behaviour of a part or application,” McDevitt says. “Engineers can vary the size of individual lattice pieces, the thickness of the struts in the lattice, and even the lattice’s orientation. One common example of this is sports equipment such as a helmet, which needs to be stiff to absorb impact but also soft for comfort, or crashworthiness in automotive where the lattice structure in a car bumper changes how it absorbs energy under impact.” Each of these advanced lightweighting concepts is made possible by 3D printing and sophisticated DfAM techniques. “It would be near impossible to design these capabilities using traditional CAD systems,” he adds. “Te ability of next-gen software like the nTopology platform to encode and automate this design intent makes it far easier for engineers to design for optimal weight and performance.”
More information can be found at
www.ntopology.com
www.engineerlive.com 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
