Stress and temperature constrained thermoelastic topology optimization of support structures for additive manufacturing

For the fabrication of structures in complex environments and to improve device performance, this paper presents a thermoelastic topology optimization formulation for the design of support structures in layer-by-layer printed additive manufacturing. The formulation is written in the form of structural compliance minimization with two competing constraint functions, one related to mechanical performance (stress) considering mechanical stress and thermal stress and one related to thermal performance (temperature). The optimization problem is solved by applying the p-norm function to handle global stress constraints and overall temperature constraints, separately. The sensitivity information of the objective function and constraints is derived using the adjoint variable method. The design variables are updated using the Method of Moving Asymptotes (MMA). We present several examples that explore the ability of the formulation to obtain optimized support structures for additive manufacturing under different volume constraints, various performance constraints, and print orientations, which addresses the issues of mechanical and thermal stress concentration when considering thermoelastic coupled effect, thus validating the effectiveness of the proposed method. In comparison with previous works, thermal performance-related constraints are introduced in this study, which effectively solves the optimization problem under thermoelastic coupling effect.