Lessons Learnt from a National Competition on Structural Optimization and Additive Manufacturing

In a recent national competition on structural optimization and additive manufacturing in China, we won the first prize with a highly efficient and elegant structural design. This paper describes important lessons learnt from the competition. We used the bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) technique for the conceptional design and a smoothing technique to work out the details of the structural boundaries. This approach was applied to the design of a hinge arm which must satisfy all the conditions set by the competition committee. We carried out a nonlinear quasi-static loading simulation before the competition committee fabricated the design using a stereolithography 3D printer. In the actual mechanical testing conducted by the national competition committee, our design displayed superior performance to other entries. The insights gained from this award-winning design will be useful for engineers and architects to employ topology optimization techniques to create efficient and elegant structures in the future.