Design knowledge representation to support personalised additive manufacturing

This research aims to develop a set of new formal design representations that captures design requirements to improve the level of personalisation while taking advantage of the additive manufacturing (AM)-enabled design freedom. We propose a formal design process structure called design for AM-facilitated personalisation that merges design for personalisation and design for additive manufacturing. Also, we propose formal representations for an artefact–user interaction using finite state automata and goal-oriented user behaviours in the artefact use as formal language sets based on discrete event systems. By adopting the relational properties of affordance, effectivity, and preference, the proposed formal representations systemically link user behaviour-related artefact properties and user preferences to the design requirements for additive manufactured artefacts. This paper presents a case study of personalised chair design and a simulation of user behaviours in the chair–user interaction.