Topology optimization method for designing replacement of the damaged part

Abstract

Emergency support and wartime repair are one of the important directions for the development of additive manufacturing technology，and also pose new challenges to the structural optimization design for additive manufacturing. In order to realize the configuration design for replacement parts of dissimilar materials，a method of topology optimization for designing replacement of damaged part manufactured by additive manufacturing was proposed. The cooling fan of an airplane is investigated as an example. Based on the analysis of the service environment and rush-repair requirement，a topology optimization problem is established under the framework of the variable density method. Meanwhile，the weight and the moment of inertia of the replacement part should be kept as equal as possible to those of the original part. Accordingly，the topology optimization formulation is established to minimize the overall structural compliance under the interval constraints of the weight and the moment of inertia of the whole structure. Sensitivity analysis is carried out consider the design-dependent effects of the centrifugal forces. According to the topology optimization result and the analysis data of the re-modelled structure，it can be seen that the topology optimization results of the cooling fan replacement parts have good convergence and meet all the design requirements. The reconstruction scheme meets the process requirements of additive manufacturing，which verifies the effectiveness of the design method in this paper.

Keywords

• topology optimization
• additive manufacturing
• damaged structure
• replacement part
• emergency support