Abstract
Latticing has become a common design practice in additive manufacturing (AM) and represents a key lightweighting strategy to date. Functional graded lattices (FGLs) have recently gained immense traction in the AM community, offering a unique way of tailoring the structural performance. This paper constitutes the first ever investigation on the combination of graded strut- and surface-based lattices with fiber-reinforced AM to further increase the performance-to-weight ratio. The energy absorption behavior of cubic lattice specimens composed of body-centered cubic and Schwarz-P unit cells with different severities of grading but the same mass, considered for uniaxial compression testing and printed by fused deposition modelling of short fiber-reinforced nylon, were investigated. The results elucidate that grading affects the energy absorption capability and deformation behavior of these lattice types differently. These findings can provide engineers with valuable insight into the properties of FGLs, aiding targeted rather than expertise-driven utilization of lattices in design for AM.
Highlights
Latticing has become a widely adopted design approach to lightweighting[1,2,3] in additive manufacturing (AM)
Taking advantage of the virtually unconstrained design freedom offered by AM, lattices can provide unique solutions to common engineering problems
The SP lattices exhibited a point of intersection at displacement of about 11 mm, after which the specimens with higher grading experience higher loading for the same displacement, whereas the body-centered cubic (BCC) lattices with the lowest grading constantly showed higher loads for the same strain, as for the SP lattice before the intersection strain
Summary
Latticing has become a widely adopted design approach to lightweighting[1,2,3] in additive manufacturing (AM). To generate cellular structures and introduce them into the design process, a number of specialized software packages are available industrially.[12,13,14,15] implementation of lattices today remains strongly expertise driven due to the limited database at the engineer’s disposal. In this context, it is important to realize that substituting solids with lattices can only be done for parts with an already high safety factor, as solids will always outperform their porous counterparts when it comes to stiffness. The results of such study will help to improve predictions of their properties and build confidence in their application for critical parts in the future
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