Adaptive design process of lattices produced by additive manufacturing

Abstract eng:
Recent developments in additive manufacturing now allow one to contemplate the fabrication of lightweight parts by the use of lattice structures. Most lattices to date are designed with a structured configuration (with repeated truss cells), while the freedom provided by additive manufacturing technologies does not impose this restriction on the design. We propose here a numerical methodology to design unstructured lattices such that material is only placed where it is needed. Lattices are described in terms of bar, beam and torsion models in order to handle the simulation of the lattice, even if they possess a large amount of trusses. For given operational constraints, we search for the truss configuration that minimizes the energy of deformation to weight ratio. The optimization is performed adaptively using a succession of increasingly complex models. This design process is finally tested on several numerical examples to demonstrate its performance.

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