Support Equilibrium Design for Laser Additive Manufacturing of Lightweight Component Based on Geometric Deformation Minimization

This article proposes a support equilibrium design methodology for laser additive manufacturing of lightweight components based on geometric deformation minimization (GDM). Controlling geometric deformation commonly induced by material residual stress is especially significant for lightweight components, as slight deviation will be amplified, thereby inducing severe imbalance that makes premature failures. Aiming to investigate the impacts of support structures on photocurable manufactured parts and further conduct support equilibrium designs, a mechanically constrained volume shrink model was constructed jointly considering the chemical reaction kinetics and evolution of material properties. The deformation and stress distributions of manufactured parts with various conceptual support structures were confirmed, and the geometric deformation were mapped to the designed ideal model to generate the deformed manifold. The bidirectional fluid–solid coupling simulation, as well as buckling response analysis were conducted to verify the effectiveness of GDM in terms of improving working performance of lightweight components under variable working conditions. In addition, the balance analysis of mass distribution was conducted by calculating the offset distance of gravity center to examine the ability of the GDM-based support equilibrium design in reducing imbalance phenomena. The physical experiment is conducted on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) parts to verify GDM via digital light processing and microscopic images. The geometric deformation during manufacturing process is reduced by 13.08%, and the average centroid shift is improved by 27.44% based on GDM, which effectively improved the working performance of lightweight components.