Conformal Wireframe Nets for Trimmed Symmetric Unit Cells in Functionally Graded Lattice Materials

Abstract

Tessellating a periodic unit cell of lattice material to fill a design space in complex geometries has many challenges arising from their computer-aided design (CAD) modeling intricacy. A solution to this difficulty is the use of trimmed micro-truss lattice structures with a conformal net. This paper presents a novel algorithm for constructing conformal lattice net as wireframe of one-dimensional line segments suitable for Bravais cubic symmetric truss-based topologies. The novel algorithm is an excellent candidate when dealing with lattice structures using cubic, body-centered cubic (BCC), face-centered cubic (FCC), and/or diamond unit cell configurations. The wireframe structure is easily transferred into one-dimensional beam elements for microscale optimizations to obtain a functionally graded lattice material. It is shown that introduction of the lattice net resulted in a significant reduction in the mass of the optimized design.