Stiffness optimization design for TPMS architected cellular materials

Abstract

The unique topology-driven versatility of natural biological systems has motivated the material science research community to design and synthesize architected cellular materials for different engineering disciplines. However, the lattice cell design of architected cellular materials is highly arbitrary, making the design of architected cellular materials very difficult. In order to overcome these problems, an innovative triple period minimal surface (TPMS) lattice type distribution algorithm based on the maximum strain energy principle is proposed in this paper to optimize the stiffness of the structure. The algorithm establishes the mapping relationship between the relative density of TPMS lattice cells and the surface bias parameter t by generating a voxel model, obtains the equivalent mechanical properties of lattice cells as a function of relative density by homogenization algorithm and function fitting, establishes a TPMS lattice database, and innovatively distributes the TPMS lattice types by selecting the maximum strain energy lattice cells on the basis of the topology optimization results. The experimental results show that the stiffness of the multi-TPMS lattice structure is improved by 55.89% and 30.15%, respectively, compared with the two single lattice structures.

Keywords

• Triple period minimal surface
• Topology optimization
• Homogenization algorithm
• Architected cellular materials
• Lattice database