A MATLAB‐Based Tool for Stress‐Guided Path Planning in Continuous Fiber Reinforced 3D Printing

ABSTRACT Additive manufacturing of continuous fiber‐reinforced composites offers exciting opportunities for the design of lightweight, high‐performance structures. This paper presents a MATLAB‐based computational tool for the automated generation of paths for reinforcing fibers in fused filament fabrication (FFF) processes, guided by the principal stress field of a structural component. The workflow begins with a finite element analysis (FEA) performed in Abaqus, from which both the geometry and the full stress state are extracted. The tool computes the local principal stress directions for each element and derives a continuous set of streamlines representing the dominant stress trajectories. Selected principal streamlines are then used to define the fiber paths, ensuring alignment with the load paths and thereby maximizing structural efficiency. The tool allows export both as a modified Abaqus model, with anisotropic material properties that reflect the computed fiber architecture, and as G‐code instructions for direct 3D printing. This approach provides a scalable and flexible framework for structurally informed path planning in continuous fiber additive manufacturing.