Oppgavetekst: Generative truss design

From Robin

When printing a complete truss structure on a FDM 3D printer, the strength of each beam will be heavily depended on the angle between the beam and the FDM layer orientation. Due to this effect it is very difficult to analytically find the optimal shape of the truss.

In this project the student will do shape optimization of a FDM printed truss structure. The student will program a custom static strength simulator where the FDM layer orientation is taken into account, and find and use suitable optimization techniques to determine the truss node positions and number. A heuristic local search is expected to be used for finding the optimal node positions and a more global type of search is expected to be used for finding the optimal number of nodes.

It may also be relevant to optimize with respect to minimal FDM support material requirements.

The resulting truss structures can be printed on a FDM printer, and if it is time for it, the reality gap can also be investigated.