Application of Topology Optimisation to Steel Node-Connections and Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Structural Topology Optimisation (STO) is a prevalent optimisation technique used nowadays to reach desired weight-to-stiffness ratios via highly complex and efficient designs unable to achieve otherwise. Additive manufacturing (AM) is widely known in the manufacturing industry and provides designers with a higher degree of freedom in realising highly optimised designs through a layer-based fabrication process. This paper focuses on reticulated structures and proposes using STO and AM to design and fabricate alternative connection designs with outstanding bespoke performance and drastically reduced weight. It studies the optimisation of a conventional node-connection found in reticulated timber structures under four loading cases, to producing state-of-the-art opti-mised connection designs, each capable of withstanding one of the four selected loading cases. The results are compared with the conventional node-connection, and the optimised configurations achieved up to 46.9% weight reduction. A selection of the highly bespoke scaled-down designs was additively manufactured in two different materials (metallic and polymer) as a proof of concept for the capacity of the technologies available for future testing.