Titanium Cholla: Lightweight, High- Strength Structures for Aerospace Applications

Aerospace designers seek lightweight, high-strength structures to lower launch weight while creating structures that are capable of withstanding launch loadings. Most 'light-weighting' is done through an expensive, time-consuming, iterative method requiring experience and a repeated design/test/redesign sequence until an adequate solution is obtained. Little successful work has been done in the application of generalized 3D optimization due to the difficulty of analytical solutions, the large computational requirements of computerized solutions, and the inability to manufacture many optimized structures with conventional machining processes. The Titanium Cholla LDRD team set out to create generalized 3D optimization routines, a set of analytically optimized 3D structures for testing the solutions, and a method of manufacturing these complex optimized structures. The team developed two new computer optimization solutions: Advanced Topological Optimization (ATO) and FlexFEM, an optimization package utilizing the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) software for stress analysis. The team also developed several new analytically defined classes of optimized structures. Finally, the team developed a 3D capability for the Laser Engineered Net Shaping{trademark} (LENS{reg_sign}) additive manufacturing process including process planning for 3D optimized structures. This report gives individual examples as well as one generalized example showing the optimized solutions and an optimized metal part.

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