Malhotra et al. Res. Trends Int. J. Technol. Innov., January - March 2026, 1 (1) : 54-62
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India; 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India
Article History
Accepted : 06 Mar 2026
Published : 28 Mar 2026
Publication Issue
Volume 1, Issue 1
January - March 2026
Page Number54–62
Additive manufacturing enables geometrically complex, topology-optimised parts that are impractical with conventional casting, but standard optimisation routines often ignore printability constraints such as overhang angle and minimum feature size. This study integrates overhang and self-supporting constraints directly into a SIMP-based topology optimisation of a structural automotive suspension bracket, achieving a 41 percent mass reduction relative to the baseline cast design while satisfying a static load factor of safety above 2.5 and requiring no support structures during printing.
Keywords - topology optimization, additive manufacturing, lightweight design, SIMP method, automotive components
Topology optimisation routinely produces organic geometries that are difficult or impossible to manufacture with subtractive or casting processes, but laser powder bed fusion removes many of these constraints while introducing new ones related to overhanging surfaces and thermal residual stress.
A suspension bracket subject to combined bending and torsional loads was optimised using the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalisation (SIMP) method with an added overhang-angle penalty term constraining unsupported surfaces to angles greater than 45 degrees from horizontal. The optimised geometry was printed in Ti-6Al-4V via laser powder bed fusion and tested under quasi-static loading.
The optimised bracket achieved a 41 percent mass reduction relative to the baseline cast aluminium design while maintaining a factor of safety of 2.7 under the design load case, and required zero support structures during printing, eliminating post-processing time associated with support removal.
Embedding manufacturing constraints directly within the optimisation loop yields lightweight, print-ready components without iterative manual redesign. Future work will extend the constraint set to include fatigue-driven objectives.
[1] Bendsoe M. P. and Sigmund O., Topology Optimization: Theory, Methods and Applications, Springer, 2003. [2] Langelaar M., Topology optimization for additive manufacturing, Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 2017. [3] Gibson I. et al., Additive Manufacturing Technologies, Springer, 2015.
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by IJEIA Editorial Office. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Vivek Malhotra, Preeti Saxena (2026). Topology Optimization of Lightweight Automotive Brackets Using Additive Manufacturing Constraints. IJEIA, 1(1), 54-62.