Seeley, Andrew J.; Knight, Gary P.; Price, Duncan M.; Verma Mayank; Method for fabricating a component of an abatement apparatus. GB Patent Application 2,573,767 May 15 (2018)
Method comprising: meshing a 3D model of a component, that defines a reaction chamber of an abatement apparatus, based on specified component characteristics, to define an optimised finite element representation of the component; fabricating the optimised finite element representation. Characteristics may include thermal, chemical or physical requirements, mechanical strength, conductivity, insulation, permeability gradient, porosity gradient, fluid flow, fluid communication, materials that support catalytic reactions at specific locations of the component, structural elements (eg. sealing surfaces or edges, strengthening struts, ribs, connecting flanges, screw threads, bores). Finite elements may be polygons or cellular structures comprising polyhedrons of varying sizes. Characteristics may control filling of finite elements, number of filled faces, thickness of edges joining face vertices. Voids defined by finite elements may be partially filled. Terminal constraints may prevent cellular structures from extending beyond the surface or boundary of the 3D spatial model. Cellular structures may be truncated or sub-divided. Components may be manufactured using additive manufacturing or 3D printing. Solid component shapes may be modelled via 3D computer aided design (CAD). 3D models may be used in computational fluid dynamics simulations.