General Electric Company
Multiphysics automated support generation for additively manufactured components

Abstract:

A method, medium, and system to execute an additive manufacturing (AM) simulation on a model of a part; determine, based on the AM simulation, a prediction of a temperature and displacement distribution in the part at a particular time in the AM process; apply the predicted temperature and displacement distributions in the part as a boundary conditions on a support design space to determine a temperature distribution throughout the support design space; and execute a thermal-structural topology optimization based on the determined temperature and displacement distributions throughout the support design space to determine a distribution of material in the design space for a thermal support structure to interface with the part that optimally reduces a thermal gradient in the part with a minimum of material and results in the generation of an optimized AM support structure.