Bio-inspired generative design for support structure generation and optimization in Additive Manufacturing (AM)

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is widely used to manufacture complex and personalized medical components. However, the generation and manually removing of support structures in the pre- and post-processing stages are still time-consuming and costly. To improve the automation of preparation while reducing support structure volume, post-processing time and cost, this paper proposes a bio-inspired generative design method, integrating parametric L systems, evolutionary optimization and an AM processing simulation model, to generate light-weight, easy-to-remove and heat-diffusion-friendly biomimetic support structures. Dental components are modelled and manufactured for validating the proposed method. The results obtained are compared with that of existing commercial software tools. (C) 2020 CIRP. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.