Conformal Lattice Structures: Modeling and Optimization

One of the open issues in additive manufacturing is the design of conformal lattice structures, leading to an optimal layout of the struts in the design domain. This paper aims to compare different struts distributions in conformal lattices via low computational power methods in a CAD environment. Four approaches for a wireframe virtual model definition are presented for a simple cubic conformal lattice structure. An iterative variable diameter optimization method and two linear structural analyses based on mono-dimensional elements and different theories are compared. These verification methods widen the capability of checking the results so the user can compute the deformation of 3D periodic structures, or other visual results, without spending a huge amount of time and computational power. Results show that both the analysis methods give reliable results and the struts layout based on trivariate NURBS shows the most flexible solution allowing for a real-time variation of the boundary condition.