Design of Supporting Elements Optimized for 3D Print

Abstract

Design of supporting elements optimized for 3D print The theses addresses the optimization of supporting elements for 3D print.In the near future it is expected that 3D print will completely redefine the traditional civil engineering including the supporting structures.Steel is the one alloy that is prized in construction industry for its hardness and strength.Manufacturing steel structures in 3D print will be of great benefits due to many reasons like designing of complex shapes,great quality,customization of clients and its drawback are expensive in creating the structures and it is consuming a lot of time.By designing the optimized structures we can reduce the expenses and time consumption.The study begins with a brief description of 3D printing, how 3D printers work and he most common types of the 3D printers. The main aim of the thesis is to design of optimized steel supporting elements, by comparing the non-prismatic optimized sections to prismatic optimized section and finding how much amount of steel is saved.The supporting elements chosen are beam,column and tension ropes SCIA engineering software is used. The optimization of beam is done successfully two designs are done 9 percentage and 16 percentage steel are saved ,while comparing a non-prismatic optimized section with a prismatic optimized section. For the column the optimization is not successful as there is only a very small amount of steel can be saved,and the optimization are mostly based by hand calculation as its complicated to do non linear calculation in SCIA engineering.In Euro-code there is not a particular equation for the non-prismatic column the equation used in this research is from the journal of steel structures from Tshingua University Beijing where the researcher Deng had derived an equation to find the critical force of tubular non prismatic column.The amount of steel saved are 2.43 percentage and 3.13 percentage.The thickness of the wall cannot be reduced much due to the failures arise in stress and local buckling when it come in class 3. The constant ropes used in the mines, new equations are derived for the weight and area of the prismatic optimized rope and non prismatic optimized ropes.10.6,12.3,24.7 percentage of steel can be saved from prismatic optimized ropes. The most suitable supporting elements for 3D print are Beam and Tension ropes because there is good amount of steel can be saved and it will give great benefits in 3D print less raw materials are required so the time and expenses for the manufacture of the elements can be reduced.The optimization of the column which requires a closed form of an equation which is more practicable and should satisfy all the condition's in Euro code.