Simulation-Driven Design and Additive Manufacturing

SIMULIA and Stratasys Together 

Production grade thermoplastics are gaining more frequent use in the aerospace industry due to the high cost to put small amounts of payload into the space. The circuit box, for example, is widely used in space rockets. They are traditionally made of metals due to high performance and reliability requirements in the aerospace industry. However, light-weighting is a critical concern and engineers work hard on replacement of metal materials to production grade thermoplastics and optimizing the parts with satisfactory functional performance. In this blog post, we give an overview about how Stratasys and SIMULIA together make thermoplastic parts both cheaper and more functional through additive manufacturing. With a focus on the current challenges and gaps, we also discuss concept design and printing of the final part at Stratasys and an introduction to SIMULIA’s software solutions that enable improved utilization of FDM materials and printers via process tailored design optimization, material technologies to bridge the scale for polymer based processes, and flexible print process simulation.

Stratasys has been a long time reformer for how things are made. At Stratasys, additive manufacturing platforms are tailored to targeted vertical markets through integrated solutions. Three production targeted systems are available within the Fortus product line via the FDM process and many production grade thermal plastic material systems are offered. There are many success stories throughout Stratasys’ path in bringing thermoplastics to the aerospace industry, however, there are also unsolved challenges and gaps behind the scenes including going from concept to design and the printing of the final part. The workflow is also disjointed, preventing additive manufacturing from widely adopting this for production.

SIMULIA works to develop design, simulation and validation tools, sharing the same vision with Stratasys to unlock the potential of additive manufacturing. SIMULIA provides a general framework to usher designs from concept through production. Three focused areas of solutions are developed, including:

1、Solutions for studying and designing a material microstructural architecture that represents process dependent material behavior, the varied and complex range of heterogeneous infill and microphase segregation for polymers. Predicting part distortions and residual stresses is one of the critical missions of the additive manufacturing simulations. In order to do this accurately we need complete understanding of the material as it goes through dramatic temperature cycles. Understanding the physics at the lower scales is an important driver for the part level FE simulations. SIMULIA, along with its sister brand BIOVIA, provides material modeling solutions to bridge the scales for polymer based processes starting from estimating constituent material properties, predicting microstructure morphology, characterizing process dependent material properties, to homogenizing equivalent material properties for lattice/infill designs.
2、Optimization solutions that generate realistic design concepts and optimum lattice structures considering relevant manufacturing constraints and support structure requirements in order to make the most out of additive manufacturing investments. Starting from performing topology optimization, shape optimization, validation analysis, re-parameterization and reconstruction of the optimum geometry, lattice sizing optimization to in-service performance simulation, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides all additive manufacturing customized design and optimization solutions in one single platform.
3、Solutions to define and plan polymer extrusion processes to achieve predictable and reliable builds using a flexible framework for process simulation.

With the understanding that a broad range of different additive manufacturing processes and providers are available on the market today and that most processes today require detailed process analytics such as temperature and distortion profiles in order to get a better handle on robustness and reliability, we offer a completely open and customizable process simulation framework. This allows users to customize methods that produce the analytics that inform processes, with a goal to capture the correct physics, including material property change and process specifics, predicting residual stresses and distortions and calculate tolerances, calibrating material and working to close the gap between a design and a build, and also process mapping and optimization for cost and build quality control.

SIMULIA will be hosting a one-day Additive Manufacturing Symposium at the Science in the Age of Experience conference this May in Chicago with 4 consecutive sessions focusing on key aspects in the Additive Manufacturing industry:

Each session is filled with multiple keynote speeches from industry leaders and panel discussion/Q&A. More technical papers will be presented after the keynote sessions and in the technical tracks of the main conference, as well as, Dassault Systèmes CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA and BIOVIA presentations. A number of technical papers for additive manufacturing will also be published in this year NAFEMS World Congress in Stockholm, Sweden.