Research on 3D-Print Design Method of Spatial Node Topology Optimization Based on Improved Material Interpolation

Designing a high-strength node is significant for space structures. Topological optimization can optimally allocate the material distribution of components to meet performance requirements. Although the material distribution after topology optimization is optimum, the structure becomes complicated to manufacture. By using additive manufacturing technology, this problem can be well solved. At present, both topology optimization technology and additive manufacturing technology are quite mature, but their application in the design of spatial nodes is very recent and less researched. This paper involves the study and improvement of the node optimization design–manufacturing integrated method. This study used the BESO optimization algorithm as the research algorithm. Through a reasonable improvement of the material interpolation method, the algorithm’s dependence on the experience of selecting the material penalty index P was reduced. On this basis, the secondary development was carried out, and a multisoftware integration was carried out for optimization and manufacturing. The spatial node was taken as the research object, and the calculation results of the commercial finite element software were compared. The comparison showed that the algorithm used in this paper was better. Not only was it not trapped in a local optimum, but the maximum stress was also lower. In addition, this paper proposed a practical finite element geometric model extraction method and smoothing of the optimized nodes, completing the experiment of the additive manufacturing forming of the nodes. It provides ideas for processing jagged edges brought by the BESO algorithm. This paper verified the feasibility of the multisoftware integration method of optimized manufacturing.