This paper details how Rapid Manufacturing (RM) can overcome the restrictions imposed by the inherent process limitations of conventional manufacturing techniques and become the enabling technology in fabricating optimal products. A new design methodology capable of exploiting RM's increased design freedom is therefore needed. Inspired by natural world structures of trees and bones, a multi-objective, genetic algorithm based topology optimisation approach is presented. This combines multiple unit cell structures and varying volume fractions to create a heterogeneous part structure which exhibits a uniform stress distribution.
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