Evaluating environmental sustainability, economic impact and mechanical properties of 3D-printed topologically optimized components

Additive manufacturing appears to be increasingly popular in industry and research because of its versatility. Among the technologies made possible by additive manufacturing topological optimization has raised significant interest. Indeed, it makes it possible to reduce the weight of components while maintaining the desired mechanical properties or to find an optimal trade-off between weight and mechanical strength. The following work aims to evaluate 3D-printed topologically optimized components, obtained through the FFF technique, considering their mechanical performances, environmental impact and production costs using FEM, LCA and LCC tools and proposing two hybrid multi-objective indicators. Several polymers (ABS, PA6, PETG and PLA), and 3 degrees of optimization (50, 25 and 5 wt% target mass) were proposed. LCA and LCC showed a 60% reduction in environmental and economic impact using the 5 wt% target mass topology optimization. Hybrid indicators revealed that the PA6 component with 50 wt% target mass topology optimization turns out to be the optimum compromise between environmental and economic impacts and the mechanical properties of the component.