Four Questions in Cellular Material Design.

Dhruv Bhate

doi:10.3390/ma12071060

Abstract

The design of cellular materials has recently undergone a paradigm shift, enabled by developments in Additive Manufacturing and design software. No longer do cellular materials have to be limited to traditional shapes such as honeycomb panels or stochastic foams. With this increase in design freedom comes a significant increase in optionality, which can be overwhelming to the designer. This paper aims to provide a framework for thinking about the four key questions in cellular material design: how to select a unit cell, how to vary cell size spatially, what the optimal parameters are, and finally, how best to integrate a cellular material within the structure at large. These questions are posed with the intent of stimulating further research that can address them individually, as well as integrate them in a systematic methodology for cellular material design. Different state-of-the-art solution approaches are also presented in order to provoke further investigation by the reader.

Highlights

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has enabled a wide exploration of the design space for engineering applications
One specific aspect within this design space is the development of cellular materials
With AM, it is possible to architect cellular materials that are limited only by the resolution of the AM process in question. With this additional freedom to the designer, there comes a greater responsibility of ensuring optimality of selection among several choices. When it comes to incorporating cellular material designs into structures, there are four main questions the designer needs to address, and these are the focus of this paper:

Summary

Introduction

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has enabled a wide exploration of the design space for engineering applications. With AM, it is possible to architect cellular materials that are limited only by the resolution of the AM process in question With this additional freedom to the designer, there comes a greater responsibility of ensuring optimality of selection among several choices. One such question of deep significance is: under what circumstances should a periodic cellular material be preferred over a stochastic one?. Among 2: the fourShould questions, selection of a specific unit cell has received the most consideration

Question

Question 2

Question 3

Three methods of prescribing cell thickness:

4: How is

Discussion

12. Multi-functional