Lattice Structure Design and Optimization With Additive Manufacturing Constraints

Abstract

Lattice structures with different desired physical properties are promising for a broad spectrum of applications. The availability of additive manufacturing (AM) technology has relaxed the fabricating limitation of lattice structures. However, manufacturing constraints still exist for AM-fabricated lattice structures, which have a significant influence on the printing quality and mechanical properties of lattice struts. In this paper, a design and optimization strategy is proposed for lattice structures with the consideration of manufacturability to ensure desired printing quality. [...] Our approach has the capability of considering the manufacturing constraints in the design and optimization process. We conducted experiments to investigate the manufacturability and proposed a method that can give the domain of the design variables for a selected manufacturing process. And we also designed an algorithm that can optimize the lattice structure inside the domain of design variables. It ensures that the lattice model can be successfully fabricated by the selected process and the performance is dramatically increased compared to the original design. Engineers can use our approach to optimize the lattice structure automatically without knowing the knowledge of optimization and manufacturability.