Efficient Prediction of Thermal Stresses and Distortion in Complex Optimized Missile Structures

In this SBIR work effort TDA’s team is addressing two technical questions: (1) How to reduce the computational cost of simulating powder bed process and estimate distortion and residual stresses? (2) How to optimize the topology of the support structure to improve build quality while reducing the build cost? TDA plans to improve the in-house fully automated thermo-mechanical AM finite element numerical simulation tool to rapidly calculate distortions and residual stresses using fast algorithms. Based on our experience, two surrogate models will be used to meet the requirements of computational efficiency; the main advantage of these techniques is their proven computational efficiency when properly trained. We also propose a novel topology optimization approach for the support structure which will help minimizing the overhang distortions; the simplicity of its computation guarantees a fast and robust solution. The target is to achieve high computational efficiency to meet the desired objective of calculating distortions of a small bracket (4x2.5x2 in) within 5 minutes.