Axiomatic Design to Foster Additive Manufacturing-Specific Design Knowledge

Axiomatic design has the potential to help designers understand the increased design freedom and limitations of additive manufacturing prior to starting the actual design process. The purpose of this study is to verify the usefulness of Axiomatic Design in the design process of complex additively manufactured components. The article uses a case study involving the design of a non-assembly turbine to demonstrate that Axiomatic Design can be applied as a supportive tool to acquire information on new limitations imposed by additive manufacturing, such as minimum wall thickness and maximum size of parts. The use of axiomatic design is demonstrated by describing the process of decomposition of the non-assembly turbine and examining the suitability of the general design according to the independence axiom. The resulting decomposition chart is subsequently used as a basis by the authors to design individually two competing designs of a turbine. Finally, the information axiom is used to determine the design with the lowest information content according to design (part and support volume), performance (pressure drop) and economic parameters (cost).