Title: A modelling and manufacturing strategy for the heterogeneous solids

Authors: Puneet Tandon, Anuj Kant

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra 136 119, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra 136 119, India

Abstract: Heterogeneous objects, composed of multiple materials, are now increasingly being used in engineering applications. With the development of new fabrication methods like rapid prototyping (RP), a new dimension is added to manufacture these objects. To manufacture heterogeneous objects by RP, a CAD model is required that contains both geometric information as well as material information. However, current solid modelling techniques focus mainly on capturing the geometric information only. This work presents an approach to model and represent heterogeneous objects by integrating the material information along with the geometry/topology in the solid model. Here, we define new modelling operations for creating and manipulating heterogeneous models and to complement traditional modelling operations through algorithms.

Keywords: heterogeneous solid modelling; heterogeneous objects; functionally graded material objects; STL files; rapid prototyping; CAD; layered manufacturing; manufacturing strategy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2004.005674

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2004 Vol.6 No.5, pp.485 - 500

Published online: 15 Nov 2004 *

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