Design Method for Lattice-Skin Structure Fabricated by Additive Manufacturing

Parts with complex geometry structure can be produced by AM without significant increase of fabrication time and cost. One application of AM technology is to fabricate customized lattice-skin structure which can enhance performance of products with less material and less weight. However, most of traditional design methods only focus on design at macro-level with solid structure. Thus, a design method which can generate customized lattice-skin structure for performance improvement and functionality integration is urgently needed. In this paper, a novel design method for lattice-skin structure is proposed. In this design method, FSs and FVs are firstly generated according to FRs. Then, initial design space is created by filling FVs and FSs with selected lattice topology and skin, respectively. In parallel to the second step, initial parameters of lattice-skin structure are calculated based on FRs. Finally, TO method is used to optimize parameter distribution of lattice structure with the help of mapping function between TO’s result and lattice parameters. The design method proposed in this paper is proven to be efficient with case study and provides an important foundation for wide adoption of AM technologies in industry.