Ana Pilar Valerga

• Phd
• Universidad de Cádiz

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop and characterize high-performance, biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA)-based materials for advanced applications that demand increased flexibility and shape memory capabilities. By introducing triethyl citrate (TEC) as a plasticizer and leveraging multimaterial three-dimensional printing configuration...

Orthopaedic insoles are necessary for correcting foot deformities and providing customized support. This paper investigates the optimization of insole design through computational methods, with a focus on generative design (GD) techniques. By integrating advanced design methods with biomechanical analysis, this study aims to develop customized inso...

A non-invasive technique successfully applied to various psychiatric and medical conditions is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which has been applied to modulate brain activity. TMS uses coils that induce a specific electrical field and can stimulate specific neurons or specific areas of the brain. In recent years, a notable variant of TMS...

Republic of Cameroon has a large number of amputation patients in need of an economical, functional and durable prosthetic leg. In addition, there is a shortage of health professionals in this area, which makes it difficult to care for these patients. Because of this, the development and implantation of prostheses should be performed by non-special...

In recent decades it has been witnessed a great development of parametric design and digital fabrication. This development has brought about a radical change in the way of thinking, conceiving, developing and materialising product design and architecture, opening up a new range of possibilities. Parametric design makes it possible to combine differ...

This work presents a framework to develop optimal coils of arbitrary geometry for deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS). It has been based on a continuous current density inverse boundary element method to generate dTMS coils with depth control and minimum power dissipation. Novel coil geometries that readily adapted to human head have been...

The durability and degradation of polymers is very important for product design in terms of material choice. The degradation behavior of two biodegradable thermoplastic materials manufactured by 3D printing, Enviro ABS and PLA, was studied. The action of the sun and seawater was simulated to find out how they affect the properties of these material...

The continuous demand focused on optimizing titanium machining techniques in the aerospace industry, makes improving machining processes in this area of great interest to the industry. The contamination produced by the coolants used to machine titanium is a major problem to be addressed, since it is a material that requires cooling due to its stren...

The use of techniques such as photogrammetry and laser scanning for the acquisition of geometric data in the field of heritage and conservation has become considerably widespread in recent years due to the great advantages they offer. In addition to being highly accurate, these techniques do not require direct contact for data acquisition. In this...

The use of reverse engineering techniques is one of the pillars of the Industry 4.0. It has many uses such as: control of manufacturing processes through shape recognition, data extraction or operator training through virtual reality. One of these techniques is photogrammetry, the main objective of which is to obtain information on the measurements...

Material extrusion (MEX), more commonly known as fused deposition modelling (FDM/FFF), is one of the most widely used techniques in polymeric Additive Manufacturing (AM). This technology is increasingly present in fields such as engineering and medicine with polymeric materials, including additives of many types. Polylactic acid polymer (PLA) is on...

Surface finish is an essential factor in determining product sustainability and functionality. Most methods have been developed that can be utilized to manufacture optical, mechanical, and electrical devices with a micrometer or submicrometric precision, nanoscale surface roughness, and practically no surface flaws. Finishing technologies are class...

The design and manufacture of medical implants is a dynamic and important area of research, both from a medical and an engineering standpoint. For use in the actual fabrication of the end-use implant utilizing the investment casting method, a replica of a knee implant can be produced using the fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique. Whereas ther...

Novel rationally designed Structured materials (SMs) exhibit unconventional mechanical properties that cannot be found in common materials. While most microarchitectures of the developed SMs are based on regular unit cell tessellation design, few studies have explored the potential of fractal geometry as a design tool for creating new SMs. A novel...

Recent advances in technology and refinement of available computational resources paved the way for the extensive use of computers to model and simulate complex real-world problems difficult to solve analytically. The appeal of simulations lies in the ability to predict the significance of a change to the system under study. The simulated results c...

Background Additive manufacturing (AM) being an integral component of the production offers a wide variety of applications in the production of different components. The medical industry after the introduction of Additive Manufacturing has resulted in several advancements. The production of intricate patient-specific implants is one of such advance...

Waste vegetable oils are highly valued for industrial uses. Thermal processing of these oils alters their physicochemical properties, necessitating an examination of how temperature affects their qualities. The idea of abrasive flow machining (AFM) media to finish any complex shapes and surfaces can also be accomplished using waste vegetable oils a...

In the racing world, weight is one of the key factors when developing a vehicle. Therefore, the aim is to reduce it as much as possible to achieve a good power/weight ratio that can be translated into increased speed, manoeuvrability, or reduced fuel consumption. For this reason, the trend is to redesign existing parts to obtain more optimised and...

In this work, a stream function inverse boundary element method (IBEM) has been used for designing different deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS)coils to activate the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe have been set as the target regions. In addition, the performances of these coils have been described and the electric field induced b...

Additive Manufacturing technique has the capacity to fabricate 3D parts with complex geometries, but these parts contain some defects, including increased roughness, poor quality, and poor fatigue life. These defects have resulted from balling effects, staircase effects, and incompletely fused, leading to irregular morphologies of surfaces. These i...

The novelty of EDM machining as a drilling operation for composite materials means that there is no consensus on the influence of the parameters that optimise the final quality. For these reasons, a characterisation of the EDM drilling process of a unidirectional composite material has been developed. The influence of several cutting parameters has...

Purpose Fused filament fabrication or fused deposition modeling (FFF/FDM) has as one of its main restrictions the surface quality intrinsic to the process, especially linked to the layer thickness used during manufacture. The purpose of this paper is to study the possibility of improving the surface quality of polylactic acid (PLA) parts manufactur...

This article is devoted to stacks, hybrid structures built by assembling layers of material to enhance their characteristics. To begin with, a formal classification of hybrid structures according to the material is developed. Then, the main three different methods of joining: mechanical, chemical and thermal, are explained with their advantages and...

Photogrammetry is a technique used for studying and precisely defining the shape, dimension, and position in space of any object, using mainly measurements taken over one or more photographs of that object. Today, photogrammetry is a popular science due to its ease of application, low cost, and good results. Based on these causes, it is becoming a...

Nowadays, improvement of the surface finish of parts manufactured by fused deposition modelling is a well-studied topic. Chemical post-treatments have proven to be the best technique in terms of time consumption and smoothness improvement. However, these treatments modify the structure of the material and, consequently, its mechanical properties. T...

ISBN 978-84-09-19568-8

One of the main processes within the additive manufacturing is fused deposition modeling, due to its versatility, its high capacities, and its low cost. However, this process has certain restrictions that enhance its expansion in the industrial sector such as porosity in the structure and reduced surface quality, in addition to the anisotropy gener...

Purpose This paper aims to study the interfacial and interlayer bonding of Polylactic acid parts manufactured by fused deposition modelling. Different layer thicknesses are analysed in the manufacture of these pieces and the lack of material associated with this parameter is verified. The influence of the immersion of these parts in different solve...

The application of Computer Aided Design and Engineering tools (CAD / CAE) in the study of the History of Machines and Mechanisms for their recovery and analysis, allows the modelling and graphic reconstruction for their simulation and virtual recovery. These technologies make it easier to design and modify structures. In addition, it can serve as...

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the widest Additive Manufacturing technologies used for the manufacturing of prototypes with complex geometry and different materials. However, nowadays commercial FFF machines have limitations in terms of process reliability and product quality. To overcome these limitations and increase the geometrical a...

The application of techniques to improve the surface finish of pieces obtained by fused deposition modelling, as well as other functional aspects, is of great interest nowadays. Polylactic acid, a biodegradable material, has been considered a possible substitute for petroleum-based polymers. In this work, different chemical post-processing methods...

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the widest Additive Manufacturing technologies used for the manufacturing of prototypes with complex geometry and different materials. However, nowadays commercial FFF machines have limitations in terms of process reliability and product quality. To overcome these limitations and increase the geometrical a...

The application of Computer Aided Design and Engineering tools (CAD / CAE) in the study of the History of Machines and Mechanisms for their recovery and analysis, allows the modelling and graphic reconstruction for their simulation and virtual recovery. These technologies make it easier to design and modify structures. In addition, it can serve as...

At present, Additive Manufacturing (AM) with post-processing tasks combination is an interesting as well as a necessary procedure in many industrial areas that work with polymeric components. However, there are not enough studies related to finishing treatments on AM parts. This contribution analyses different post-treatments in order to achieve im...

Additive Manufacturing Technologies is one of the enabling technologies within the industry 4.0. However, there are other more traditional manufacturing processes to develop polymer parts and can compete in efficiency and effectiveness as is the Vacuum Casting. In this paper, this technology is compared with one of the most used Additive Manufactur...

Additive manufacturing technologies play an important role in Industry 4.0. One of the most prevalent processes is fused deposition modelling (FDM) due to its versatility and low cost. However, there is still a lack of standardization of materials and procedures within this technology. This work aims to study the relationship of certain operating p...

In a previous work, dumbbell specimens were shown to be inadequate for the tensile testing of Additive Manufacturing monolayers. Finite Element Method (FEM) has been used in this contribution for comparing tensile-stress distributions in both conventional and rectangular samples. Different extrusion paths for the manufacturing via Fused Layer Model...

Colour can specially imply deviations in dimensional tolerances of manufactured parts, requiring the availability of the benchmark to ensure that Additive Manufacturing (AM) processed parts comply with the required design features, especially geometric ones. This is caused by the differences in the colouring process and the colour additives to the...

Reverse Engineering (RE) involves the use of techniques aimed to retrieve information about manufactured products, not only regarding geometries, but also materials and functionality. Today, even if several RE techniques are known, many of them still leave the object unusable to analyze. Nevertheless, other alternatives to this problem allows for o...

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is starting to replace conventional manufacturing processes where complex parts with small lead-time and lot sizes are needed. As conventional test methods are not suitable for AM parts, new standard specimens and test procedures have to be defined. This work undertakes some efforts to progress the design of specimens fo...

Reverse Engineering involves the use of techniques for extracting information about manufactured products. Assembled products contain usually hidden parts. Because of this, it is difficult finding RE procedures that involve the use of 3D-scanning techniques. However, 3D scanning technologies can help to capture information about their geometry for...

Fused Deposition Model is one of the main Additive Manufacturing processes. Nevertheless it has some limiting features. One of them is the surface quality of the product. For this technique, a specimen has been proposed through the modification of two important manufacturing parameters:the feed rate and the extrusion temperature. This allows analyz...