1. Institute of Intelligence Material and Structure, Unmanned System Technologies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China;
2. State IJR Center of Aerospace Design and Additive Manufacturing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China;
3. MIIT Lab of Metal Additive Manufacturing and Innovative Design, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Abstract:Topology optimization (TO) & additive manufacturing (AM) provide a complete innovation methodology for lightweight and high-performance complicated structures. This paper reviews the recent research on the integration of TO and AM, including the TO method considering AM processing constraints, the optimization method of non-uniform lattice structure. Furthermore, the integration of TO and AM is typically applied in civil aircraft structural design. Taking the structural design of hatch rocker arm and hinge arm as examples, while meeting the design indicators, the weight of hatch rocker arm and hinge arm structure were reduced by 10% and 30%, respectively. Finally, the integration of TO and AM shows obvious advantages in aerospace and other fields. However, the conventional design methods such as traditional static stiffness and static strength are mainly used, currently, and the industry application are focused on functional parts and secondary load-bearing parts. In the future, breakthroughs are needed in the fields such as fatigue-resistant design of AM structures.