Anisotropic topology optimization and 3D printing for composite structures with tailored continuous carbon fiber paths

Abstract

This paper presents an integration of level set-based anisotropic topology optimization and 3D printing for designing continuous carbon fiber (CCF)-reinforced polymer composite structures. During the optimization process, geometric boundaries of the composite structure are updated by solving a reaction-diffusion equation. Based on these boundaries, the fast marching algorithm is employed to generate tailored CCF paths across the structural domain. This approach ensures consistency of the fiber path layout in the numerical topology optimization and the corresponding 3D-printed model. To validate performance, the 3D-printed composite structure using tailored CCF paths is compared with structures using fixed fiber paths orientations of 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees, and 60 degrees, respectively. The numerical findings closely align with the experimental results for all study cases. Furthermore, the topology-optimized structure with tailored CCF paths exhibits superior performance.