Additive manufacturing offers the possibility to directly manufacture physical components from virtual product models. In recent years, additive manufacturing technologies have found their way from research laboratories and prototyping into the industrial landscape and are key technologies for individualized mass production and sustainability.
Up to now, the aspect of special geometric freedom of design with regard to lightweight potential has been the main focus in additive manufacturing. The possibilities offered by the processes with regard to additional functional properties of the components have not yet been fully utilized. In the School for Additive Manufacturing (SAM), additively manufactured components are therefore to be further developed in such a way that they no longer only fulfil structural-mechanical tasks, feature sensory or actuator properties. The basis for this is the processing of graded multi-materials. The technologies developed in SAM can, for example, be used for adaptive prostheses, self-optimizing dampers in vehicle construction, or component identification and communication in the context of industry 4.0.
Compared to conventional manufacturing processes, Additive Manufacturing offers a wide range of new design options, including a high potential for function integration. Fused Layer Modeling provides the possibility of combining several materials in one component without an additional joining process. For example, functions based on locally adapted thermal or electrical conductivity can be integrated into one component and piezoresistive structures can be realized by means of local application of composite materials.
In literature, first approaches are described which show a general feasibility of additively manufactured piezoresistive sensors, but the integration using Fused Layer Modeling is hardly considered. Furthermore, no method for the design of such sensor structures is known so far. The aim of the PhD project is therefore to develop a method for the conception and design of additively manufactured piezoresistive sensors. To achieve this, an analysis of the degrees of freedom of Additive Manufacturing with regard to sensor integration and manufacturing using a potential network has to be conducted.
The PhD program SAM is funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture under project code 78904-63-3/19.