With the increasing demand for lightweight constructions, composite materials with their high achievable stiffness and strength at low weight are becoming increasingly important. With the help of additive manufacturing (AM), the advantages of material and production can be combined. Fused filament fabrication combines the classic advantages of AM with the possibility of placing the anisotropic filament of fiber-reinforced plastics in the direction of the expected stress flow in order to increase the effectiveness of material use.

For structures with complex fiber architecture, the transfer of a fiber composite design into the path planning of an additive manufacturing process has so far been a largely manual process. For example, the result of optimizing a fibre composite structure is available in the form of a vector field of local material orientations. Manual path planning is then used to try to implement a component that resembles this optimized design. 

To date, there is no approach for optimizing additively manufactured composite components made of continuous fibers in such a way that a finished design is created and at the same time its full lightweight potential is exploited. The weak point here is the transition between the structural-mechanical model, path planning and the manufacturing process, which is why a continuous design chain can only be developed in close cooperation between structural optimization and manufacturing technology.

The overarching goal of the project is to develop a continuous process for model-informed path planning and structural optimization of additively manufactured fiber composite components. The path planning should anticipate and compensate for process-induced sources of error through simulation, control and modelling of the non-planar production and the fiber-matrix combination. The design-dependent, local strength due to a varying fibre volume fraction as well as manufacturing restrictions are to be taken into account in the optimization of the basic structure and the planned paths.

Therefore, a method for error-compensating path planning with model-based process parameters is being developed and a fused filament fabrication process for the non-planar additive manufacturing of fiber-reinforced plastic composites is being adapted to it. The paths determined in this way are the input for a method to be developed for the structural optimization of fiber paths while maintaining manufacturability and taking into account design-dependent strengths and stiffnesses. This overall process is validated by physical manufacturing and testing procedures.

• Contact: Kai Steltner
• Duration: 01/2025-12/2026
• Funded by: DFG