An integrated method for lightweight design and additive manufacturing of UAV arms

Topology optimization and additive manufacturing (AM) have been widely applied to the lightweight design and fabrication of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, existing topology optimization methods for UAVs typically assume isotropic materials, neglecting the anisotropy inherent in AM and the associated manufacturing precision constraints. This paper proposes a lightweight integrated method in MATLAB R2021a for the design and AM of UAV arms that simultaneously accounts for printing-induced anisotropy and minimum feature size constraints. A topology optimization model is proposed that uses nodal density and element printing angle as coupled design variables, and the corresponding sensitivity analysis is carried out. In the manufacturing phase, a contour-offset strategy is employed to generate printing paths for the optimized structures, achieving effective force transmission. The effects of manufacturing and optimization parameters on the design results are systematically investigated. The results show that, compared with the traditional optimization method, the compliance difference between the optimized structure obtained by the proposed method and the traditional method is only 0.46%. Furthermore, while ensuring manufacturability, printing efficiency is improved by approximately 69%. This approach establishes a unified design-to-manufacturing workflow, providing both a theoretical foundation and a practical pathway for the intelligent design and efficient fabrication of UAVs and other lightweight structural components.