The effect of geometric design and materials on section properties of additively manufactured lattice elements

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies such as laser-based powder bed fusion (LB-PBF) facilitate the fabrication of complex lattice structures. However, these structures consistently display dimensional variation between the idealised and as-manufactured specimens. This research proposes a method to characterise the impact of common LB-PBF powders (aluminium and titanium alloys) and geometric design parameters (polygon order, effective diameter, and inclination angle) on section properties relevant to stiffness and strength of as-manufactured strut elements. Micro-computed tomography (µCT) has been applied to algorithmically characterise the as-manufactured variation and identify a scale threshold below which additional geometric resolution does not influence the section properties of as-manufactured parts. This methodology provides a robust and algorithmic design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) tool to characterise the effects of manufacturing and design parameters on the functional response of AM strut elements, as is required for certification and optimisation.