A categorical framework for formalising knowledge in additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) changes the way products are designed, manufactured and measured. It enables the fabrication of components with complex geometries and customisable material properties. However traditional design rules or guidelines are no longer applicable for AM. As a result design for additive manufacturing lacks of formal and structured design principles and guidelines. It urges a comprehensive system that can help designers and engineers understand for example how the geometrical design and process parameters will affect each other, and how to configure process parameters to meet specifications. In this paper a set of category ontologies has been developed to formalise fundamental/general knowledge of design and process for AM. A collection of design guidelines and rules are encapsulated and modelled into categorical structures. The formalisation of knowledge of AM will enable existing fundamental/general knowledge of AM process and state-of-the-art designing cases computer-readable and to be interrogated and reasoned, and then can be integrated into CAx platforms.