Experimental-assisted design development for an octahedral cellular structure using additive manufacturing

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Yang

Purpose – This paper aims to demonstrate the design and verification of a 3D reticulate octahedral cellular structure using both analytical modeling and additive manufacturing. Traditionally, it has been difficult to develop and verify designs for 3D cellular structures due to their design complexity. Design/methodology/approach – Unit cell modeling approach was used to model the octahedral cellular structure. By applying structural symmetry simplification, the cellular structure was simplified into a representative geometry that could be further designed with a standard beam theory. The verification samples were fabricated with EBM process using Ti6Al4V as materials, and compressive testing were performed to evaluate their properties. In addition, designs with different number of unit cells were investigated to evaluate their size effect. Findings – Explicit mechanical property design (including modulus and compressive strength) of the octahedral cellular structure was realized via parametric equations driven by geometrical designs and material types. In addition, it was verified both numerically and experimentally that the octahedral cellular structure exhibit unusual size effect, which is highly predictable. Unlike some of the other cellular structures, the octahedral cellular structure exhibits softening behavior when the number of unit cell increases between the sandwich skins, which could be explained by the upsetting effect commonly observed in bulk deformation processes. Originality/value – This paper established a more comprehensive understanding in the design of octahedral cellular structures, which could enable this type of structure to be designed for sandwich structures with higher fidelity. Therefore, this study not only demonstrated an efficient methodology to design 3D cellular structures using additive manufacturing, but also facilitated the development of design for an additive manufacturing theory.

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 660-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Cheng ◽  
Pu Zhang ◽  
Emre Biyikli ◽  
Jiaxi Bai ◽  
Joshua Robbins ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to propose a homogenization-based topology optimization method to optimize the design of variable-density cellular structure, in order to achieve lightweight design and overcome some of the manufacturability issues in additive manufacturing. Design/methodology/approach First, homogenization is performed to capture the effective mechanical properties of cellular structures through the scaling law as a function their relative density. Second, the scaling law is used directly in the topology optimization algorithm to compute the optimal density distribution for the part being optimized. Third, a new technique is presented to reconstruct the computer-aided design (CAD) model of the optimal variable-density cellular structure. The proposed method is validated by comparing the results obtained through homogenized model, full-scale simulation and experimentally testing the optimized parts after being additive manufactured. Findings The test examples demonstrate that the homogenization-based method is efficient, accurate and is able to produce manufacturable designs. Originality/value The optimized designs in our examples also show significant increase in stiffness and strength when compared to the original designs with identical overall weight.


Polymers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Liu ◽  
Guessasma ◽  
Zhu ◽  
Zhang

This study aims at reporting a strategy of designing cellular materials based on Voronoi–Monte Carlo approach for additive manufacturing. The approach is implemented to produce a fully connected cellular structure in the design space without producing material discontinuity. The main characteristics of the cellular structure, such as the density and the cell size, are controlled by means of two generation parameters, namely the number of seed points and the relaxation time. The generated cellular structures representing various designs of generated cellular wrenches are converted into surface tessellations and manufactured using stereolithography. Bending experiments are performed up to the rupture point and main attributes representing the performance of the SL-based cellular wrenches are studied with respect to the generation parameters. The results show only slight difference between CAD (Computer-Aided Design) models of the design and the real printed parts. The number of seed points is found to control the main feature of the wrench performance whereas the relaxation time is found to have a secondary effect.


Author(s):  
Silvestro Barbarino ◽  
Michael E. Pontecorvo ◽  
Farhan S. Gandhi

Cellular structures with hexagonal unit cells show a high degree of flexibility in design. Based on the geometry of the unit cells, highly orthotropic structures, structures with negative Poisson’s ratios, structures with high strain capability in a particular direction, or other desirable characteristics may be designed. Much of the prior work on cellular structures is based on hexagonal honeycomb-like unit cells, without any inclusions. A companion paper to the current paper presented a vision of cellular honeycomb-like structures with diverse inclusions or internal features within the unit cells (such as contact elements resulting in stiffening behavior, buckling beams resulting in softening behavior, bi-stable elements producing negative stiffness or viscous dashpots producing dissipative behavior). That paper further went into details on linear springs as the most fundamental of inclusions. In the present paper, a buckling beam and viscous dashpots are used as inclusions in the basic pin-jointed rigid-walled hexagonal unit cell. The buckling beam provides the cell with a high initial stiffness and load carrying capability. At loads beyond the critical buckling load, the unit cell softens (while still retaining the ability to carry a “design” load), and undergoes large deformation under incremental load. The viscous dampers undergo a correspondingly large stroke resulting in high dissipative capability and loss factor under harmonic or transient disturbance beyond the design load. In the paper, an analysis and design study of the cell behavior with variation in unit cell geometric parameters, buckling beam parameters and viscous dashpot parameters is presented. The analytical results in the paper are validated against ANSYS Finite Element results. Further, a prototype unit cell with an aluminum internal buckling beam and viscous dashpots is fabricated and tested under static and dynamic loads in an Instron machine. Good correlation is observed between the tests, the FE results and the analytical simulations when accounting for the non-linear behavior of the viscous dashpot used in the tests.


Author(s):  
Pu Zhang ◽  
Jakub Toman ◽  
Yiqi Yu ◽  
Emre Biyikli ◽  
Mesut Kirca ◽  
...  

Cellular structures are promising candidates for additive manufacturing (AM) due to their lower material and energy consumption. In this work, an efficient method is proposed for optimizing the topology of variable-density cellular structures to be fabricated by certain AM process. The method gains accuracy by relating the cellular structure's microstructure to continuous micromechanics models and achieves efficiency through conducting continuum topology optimization at macroscopic scale. The explicit cellular structure is then finally reconstructed by mapping the optimized continuous parameters (e.g., density) to cell structural parameters (e.g., strut diameter). The proposed method is validated by both finite element analysis and experimental tests on specimens manufactured by stereolithography.


Author(s):  
Yafeng Han ◽  
Wen F. Lu

Cellular structures are broadly applicable to lightweight design and multifunctional applications. Especially, with unprecedented fabrication freedom provided by additive manufacturing (AM), design and optimization of nonuniform cellular structures have recently attracted great research interests. Topology optimization is one of the most powerful tools to obtain the optimized material distribution, and much research have been conducted to optimize cellular structures with the help of this optimization technique. In general, the optimized cellular structure is generated based on a predefined ground structure, and thickness of each strut is then decided based on the optimization result. However, many existing studies did not consider the constraints of AM processes, such as some generated struts may be too thin to be manufactured. Besides, only load support structure was considered in these studies. Other applications, such as heat dissipation or energy absorption, were rarely researched. In this paper, a novel cellular structure design method, which considered both functionality and manufacturability, is proposed. Different from other methods, wall thickness of the structure was set as a constant. To get the optimized material distribution, variable cell sizes were applied. Because of uniform wall thickness, the smaller the unit cell is, the higher its volume fraction will be. By mapping small unit cells to high density area and large cell to low density area, the final optimized cellular structure can be generated. In addition, because smaller unit cells have higher surface-to-volume ratio, this method can also be applied to solve heat transfer problem. Two examples, minimum compliance design of a cantilever beam and maximum heat dissipation efficiency design of a CPU heat sink, were conducted to validate the proposed method.


Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1895
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kozior ◽  
Czesław Kundera

This research paper reviews the test results involving viscoelastic properties of cellular structure models made with the PolyJet Matrix—PJM additive technology. The designed test specimens were of complex cellular structure and made of three various photo-curable polymer resin types. Materials were selected taking into account the so-called “soft” and “tough” material groups. Compressive stress relaxation tests were conducted in accordance with the recommendations of standard ISO 3384, and the impact of the geometric structure shape and material selection on viscoelastic properties, as well as the most favorable geometric variants of the tested cellular structure models were determined. Mathematica and Origin software was used to conduct a statistical analysis of the test results and determine five-parameter functions approximating relaxation curves. The most favorable rheological was adopted and its mean parameters determined, which enables to match both printed model materials and their geometry in the future, to make a component with a specific rheological response. Furthermore, the test results indicated that there was a possibility of modelling cellular structures within the PJM technology, using support material as well.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 705-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Fantini ◽  
F. De Crescenzio ◽  
L. Ciocca ◽  
F. Persiani

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe two different approaches for manufacturing pre-formed titanium meshes to assist prosthetically guided bone regeneration of atrophic maxillary arches. Both methods are based on the use of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies and aim to limit at the minimal intervention the bone reconstructive surgery by virtual planning the surgical intervention for dental implants placement. Design/methodology/approach – Two patients with atrophic maxillary arches were scheduled for bone augmentation using pre-formed titanium mesh with particulate autogenous bone graft and alloplastic material. The complete workflow consists of four steps: three-dimensional (3D) acquisition of medical images and virtual planning, 3D modelling and design of the bone augmentation volume, manufacturing of biomodels and pre-formed meshes, clinical procedure and follow up. For what concerns the AM, fused deposition modelling (FDM) and direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) were used. Findings – For both patients, a post-operative control CT examination was scheduled to evaluate the progression of the regenerative process and verify the availability of an adequate amount of bone before the surgical intervention for dental implants placement. In both cases, the regenerated bone was sufficient to fix the implants in the planned position, improving the intervention quality and reducing the intervention time during surgery. Originality/value – A comparison between two novel methods, involving AM technologies are presented as viable and reproducible methods to assist the correct bone augmentation of atrophic patients, prior to implant placement for the final implant supported prosthetic rehabilitation.


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