Voronoi diagram and monte-carlo simulation based finite element optimization for cost-effective 3d printing

Abstract

y extending the work published at ICCS 2020 [1], in this paper we propose a method to achieve cost-effective 3D printing of stiffened thin-shell objects. Our proposed method consists of three parts. The first part integrates finite element analysis, Voronoi diagram, and conformal mapping to obtain stiffener distribution. The second part combines finite element analysis with optimization calculations to determine the optimal sizes of stiffeners. And the third part introduces Monte-Carlo simulation to find a global optimum. The experiments made in this paper indicate that our proposed method is effective in minimizing 3D printing material consumption of stiffened thin-shell objects.