A flexible and easy-to-use open-source tool for designing functionally graded 3D porous structures

Abstract

Advances in additive manufacturing technologies are leading to an increased interest in the design of intricate 3D geometries for applications ranging from aerospace to biomedical engineering. In this paper, we present ASLI (A Simple Lattice Infiller), a cross-platform tool for the generation of cellular solid structures that allows users to provide implicitly defined lattice infills to 3D objects by specifying the desired local unit cell type, size and feature. It is written in C++ and relies on the open-source libraries Mmg and CGAL to handle the implicit domain discretisation. Although developed to design lattice infills for skeletal tissue engineering applications, ASLI can be used for any application that requires the user to provide lattice infills to 3D objects. Its capabilities are shown through a series of examples that demonstrate complex designs can easily be accomplished. The code is published under an open-source license and is available for download at github.com/tpms-lattice/ASLI.

Keywords

• tissue engineering
• scaffolds
• functional materials
• tpms
• additive manufacturing