5. Summary and future work
The main contribution of this paper is to propose a topology optimization framework that leads to designs with reduced support structures. Specifically, we introduced a novel topological sensitivity approach for constraining support structure volume during design optimization. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme was illustrated through several numerical examples, and demonstrated using FDM technology. Support structures were assumed to be vertical for simplicity, but we believe that the methodology can be extended to handle non-vertical support structures. Additionally, the weighting proposed in this paper is simple and easy to implement. Since there are no benchmark examples in the literature for support volumes, it is difficult to evaluate efficacy of the proposed method. Finally, the work presented is seen as a first step towards a more comprehensive framework for integrating topology optimization and additive manufacturing. Additional research is needed to include other AM-related constraints, such as surface roughness, volumetric error, inter-layer fusion, and so on. Finally, the proposed method must be coupled with methods for finding the optimum build direction to further reduce support volume.
