Improving the fatigue life of printed structures using stochastic variations

Abstract

Additive manufacturing allows designers to create geometries that would not be possible or economical to manufacture using traditional manufacturing processes. Production with these technologies does, however, introduce a large amount of variation and additional unknowns. These random variations from idealized geometry or material properties can harm the performance of the design. The current work presents an approach to improve the fatigue life of such structures, and simultaneously reduce its influence from random variations in local thickness. Following an initial numerical study, the results are experimentally validated. Experimental results show a significant improvement in fatigue life in the redesigned sample with a tailored thickness distribution.