Browsing by Subject "support materials"
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Item Examination of Build Height in Ultrasonic Consolidation for Foil Width Specimens Using Supports(University of Texas at Austin, 2012-08-15) Gibert, James M.; McCullough, Daniel T.; Fadel, Georges M.; Jonhson, Kenneth E.Ultrasonic consolidation (UC) is a novel, solid-state, additive manufacturing fabrication process. It consists of ultrasonic joining of thin metal foils and contour milling to directly produce functional components in a variety of geometries. The bond between layers forms when an ultrasonic horn creates a local oscillating stress field at the mating surfaces. It is commonly theorized that the high frequency vibration under pressure produces a metallurgical bond without melting the base material. The mechanism behind the bond is believed to be due to interfacial motion and friction that disrupts surface contaminants, arguably allowing direct metal to metal contact, and producing sufficient stress to induce plastic flow and promote the growth of grains across the mating surfaces. Ignored in this explanation is the role of substrate dimensions on the quality and strength of the joining process. Researchers have previously examined the effective height limitations of the build process, i.e., the limiting height to width ratio of one of the component features being fabricated. This paper extends the experimental work on using support materials to extend build height on specimens using two different candidate materials, tin bismuth, and a mixture of sugar, corn syrup, and water, referred to as “candy”. Tin bismuth and candy the represent the extremes of a tradeoff between convenience and stiffness that a support material must possess.Item Integrating UC and FDM to Create a Support Materials Deposition System(University of Texas at Austin, 2009-09-15) Swank, M.L.; Strucker, B.E.; Medina, F.R.; Wicker, R.B.Currently there is no automated deposition system available for support materials in Ultrasonic Consolidation. Support materials are important to the UC technology because of the benefits that can be geometrically achieved. Without an integrated support materials system many geometries and features will be impossible to create. This paper describes the approach taken to integrate UC and FDM in order to automatically deposit materials as a support in a UC machine. This includes the process setup, design, and planning. Finally a build process integrating the two machines is shown to demonstrate that automated support material deposition in UC is possible.Item Investigation of Support Materials for Use in Ultrasonic Consolidation(University of Texas at Austin, 2009-09-15) Swank, M.L.; Strucker, B.E.This paper provides an overview of the need for supports and what characterizes a good support material for Ultrasonic Consolidation. The goal is to look at a broad range of possible support material choices and the benefits and drawbacks of each. By manually depositing support materials during a build, each material is evaluated for its performance for three different configurations: an enclosed pocket, freestanding rib, and open channel. These configurations represent commonly seen features that often need to be built using Ultrasonic Consolidation, but currently cannot be well constructed. The builds are constructed with 3003 Aluminum tapes at room temperature. Microstructures are also studied to evaluate the consolidated material.Item A Post-Processing Procedure for Level Set Based Topology Optimization(University of Texas at Austin, 2017) Xian, Y.; Rosen, D.W.This paper addresses two issues: 1. Topology optimization yields designs that may require support structures if additively manufactured, which increase material and clean-up costs. 2. Topologically optimized designs consist of discretized geometry which makes subsequent engineering difficult, hence the increasing need to somehow render TO results to parameterized CAD models. This paper presents a procedure that, after a standard level set based topology optimization, firstly identifies certain regions on the part boundary that may require support materials or may cause staircase effect during 3D printing, then replaces these boundary segments with similar-shaped printable design features. Additionally, other boundary regions are fitted with simple geometric entities, so that the part boundary can be completely defined by geometric parameters of design primitives.