A DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ONTOLOGY TO SUPPORT MANUFACTURABILITY ANALYSIS

Published

October 1, 2018

Author(s)

Samyeon Kim, David W. Rosen, Paul Witherell, Hyunwoong Ko

Abstract

Design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) provides design freedom for creating complex geometries and guides designers to ensure manufacturability of parts fabricated using additive manufacturing (AM) processes. However, there is a lack of formalized DFAM knowledge that provides information on how to design parts and how to plan AM processes for achieving target goals, e.g., reducing build-time. Therefore, this study presents a DFAM ontology using the web ontology language (OWL) to formalize DFAM knowledge and support queries for retrieving that knowledge. The DFAM ontology has four high level classes to represent design rules specifically: design features and design, process, and material parameters. Additionally, the manufacturing feature concept is defined to link part design to AM process parameters. Since manufacturing features contain information on AM constraints, the DFAM ontology supports manufacturability analysis of design features by reasoning with Semantic Query-enhanced Web Rule Language (SQWRL). The SQWRL rules in this study also help retrieve design recommendations for improving manufacturability. A case study is performed to illustrate usefulness of the DFAM ontology and SQWRL rule application. This study contributes to developing a knowledge base that can be reusable and upgradable and to analyzing manufacturing analysis to provide feedback about part designs to designers.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the ASME 2018 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers
and Information in Engineering Conference

Conference Dates

August 26-29, 2018

Conference Location

Quebec, CA

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Design for additive manufacturing, Manufacturability analysis, Ontology

Citation

Kim, S. , Rosen, D. , Witherell, P. and Ko, H. (2018), A DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ONTOLOGY TO SUPPORT MANUFACTURABILITY ANALYSIS, Proceedings of the ASME 2018 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Quebec, CA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925693 (Accessed December 7, 2025)