Optimal Design Of Support Structures In Selective Laser Melting

Selective laser melting(SLM)molding technology is a rapidly growing additive manufacturing technology in recent years,which is being widely used in the manufacturing of aerospace,biomedical and other fields.Parts are often warped and collapsed during SLM manufacturing process,which is related to the addition of part support.After the part is formed,the support is stripped from the surface of the part,which can affect the surface quality of the part.At the same time,excessive material consumption by the support molding can affect the SLM printing efficiency.Therefore,it is necessary to study the supporting structure of SLM molded parts.In this paper,the support structure is studied from three aspects: the direction of the support structure,the distribution of the contact position between the support and the part,and the topological optimization design of the support structure.The main contents of this paper and innovative work are as follows:(1)Study the direction of the support structure on the impact of part molding.In this paper,finite element simulation method is used to simulate the displacement of the contact position between the support and the part when the direction of support structure is acute,obtuse and right angle respectively.The simulation results show that the support structure can suppress the warpage of the part when the direction of the support structure is obtuse.(2)Study on the distribution of contact locations between support structures and parts affects the temperature field and stress field of the forming first layer during the forming process of the laser melting parts.First,the numerical simulation of ANSYS software was used to analyze the transient temperature field of the equidistant support structure model and the non-equidistant support model sheet.Secondly,the node temperature in the temperature field is used as the load to solve the model stress field.Finally,the comparison between the stress field and the thermal deformation of the two to determine the distribution of the support structure can better suppress the warpage of the part.(3)Topology Optimization Calculation of Siding Structures.According to the results of topology optimization,the panel can be made into a design for manufacture.The topological optimization design of the panel support structure forms a mesh support structure.Mesh support structure and sheet metal contact position with the same interval support structure model.By comparing the temperature field cloud,the equivalent stress field cloud and the thermal deformation cloud to verify that the topological optimization design of the mesh support structure is more conducive to suppress the occurrence of warpage of parts.