A method for optimising the arrangement of internal channels in aircraft hydraulic manifolds manufactured by additive manufacturing

Selective Laser Melting (SLM), a type of 3D printing technology, is used to rapidly manufacture complex parts by melting selected areas of material layer by layer. Aircraft hydraulic manifolds can be machined using SLM to achieve small size, low resistance, and high machining quality simultaneously. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate a method for the design of internal channels for additive manufacturing of aircraft hydraulic manifolds. In this paper, a novel optimisation method for the alignment of the channels is proposed. It is based on the A-star algorithm, which integrates volume, resistance, and surface quality. The channel is first parameterised in terms of centre line coordinates and channel diameter. Then, the channel resistance coefficient model and the forming surface roughness model are established through experiments. Meanwhile, a cost function including centreline length, channel resistance and surface roughness is built and embedded into the A-star algorithm, and then the centreline is smoothed using mean filtering. It is worth mentioning here that engineers can adjust the coefficients in the cost function to obtain the optimal channel arrangement scheme according to the actual demand. The results show that the planning method proposed in this paper can obtain the channel arrangement scheme with short path, low resistance, and low surface roughness.