Methods for improved build feasibility in Additive Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is considered one of the most important emerging technologies in the last years and it is developing more and more in the industrial field, considered an important pivot of the industrial revolution 4.0. The substantial difference from traditional technologies, considered subtractive, is that the part is built one layer at the time. Each successive layer is bonded to the preceding layer of melted or partially melted material. This allows lighter, more complex and more performing components, but at the same time the potential offered freedom is limited when complex geometries are printed. Additional support structures are often required in order to sustain overhanging parts but also to reduce the thermal warping, to minimize the residual stresses and to dissipate the heat generated during the melt. These structures are built with the part and at the end of the process they are removed, resulting an increase in manufacturing time and costs. The aim of this thesis is to develop a methodology which allows to apply the concept of Topology Optimization in the design of the support structures for metal AM, defining a better distribution of the material, improving their structural and thermal behaviour, trying to minimize the amount of material dedicated to the support structures. The methodology is applied to a pressure Rake, used for diagnostic wind tunnel testing in order to determine the thermo-fluid dynamics conditions along the wall of a model or within the tunnel itself. In order to validate the goodness of the methodology, it has been considered a comparison made in terms of performance between optimized support structures and traditional support structures.