Abstract
Additive manufacturing can be used to produce structures which would be impossible to manufacture using traditional manufacturing processes. One application of this technology is for fabrication of customized, light-weight material called mesoscale lattice structure (MSLS), which is a type of cellular structure with dimensions in the range of 0.1 to 10 mm. The problem to be addressed in this paper is how to efficiently synthesize MSLS with thousands of struts and, hence, thousands of design variables. A heuristic optimization method is presented for efficiently synthesizing large MSLS on complex shaped parts that reduces the multivariate optimization problem to a problem of only two variables. The heuristic is based on the observation that the stress distribution in a MSLS will be similar to the stress distribution in a solid body of the same overall shape. Based on local stress states, unit cells from a predefined unit-cell library are selected and sized to support those stress states. In this paper, the method is applied to design a strong, stiff, and light-weight Micro Air Vehicle fuselage. Weight savings are demonstrated as a result.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Abbreviations
- MSLS:
-
Meso-Scale Lattice Structures
- SMS:
-
Size Matching and Scaling Method
- CLS:
-
Conformal Lattice Structures
References
Rosen, D. W., “Computer-aided design for additive manufacturing of cellular structures,” Computer-Aided Design & Applications, App., Vol. 4, No.5, pp. 585–594, 2007.
Gibson, I., Rosen, D. W., and Stucker, B., “Additive Manufacturing Technologies: Rapid Prototyping to Direct Digital Manufacturing,” Springer, 2010.
Gibson, L. J. and Ashby, M. F., “Cellular Solids: Structure and Properties,” Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Deshpande, V. S., Fleck, N. A., and Ashby, M. F., “Effective properties of the octet-truss lattice material.” J. Mech. Phys. Solids, Vol. 49, No. 8, pp. 1747–1769, 2001.
Wang, A. J. and McDowell, D. L., “Yield surfaces of various periodic metal honeycombs at intermediate relative density,” Int. J. Plasticity, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 285–320, 2005.
Johnston, S. R., Reed, M., Wang, H., and Rosen, D. W., “Analysis of Mesostructure Unit Cells Comprised of Octet-truss Structures,” Proc. of the The Seventeenth Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, 2006.
Bendsøe, M. P. and Sigmund, O., “Topology Optimization: Theory, Methods and Applications,” Springer, 2003.
Allaire, G., “Shape Optimization by the Homogenization Method,” Springer, 2002.
Rozvany, G. I. N., “Topology Optimization in Structural Mechanics,” Springer, 2003.
Michell, A. G. M., “Limits of economy material in frame structures,” Philosophy Magazine, Vol. 8, pp. 589–597, 1904.
Bendsøe, M. P. and Kikuchi, N., “Generating optimal topologies in structural design using a homogenization method,” Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 197–224, 1988.
Wang, H., Chen, Y., and Rosen, D. W., “A hybrid geometric modeling method for large scale conformal cellular structures,” ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, DETC 2005-85366, 2005.
Chen, Y., “An accurate sampling-based method for approximating geometry,” Computer-Aided Design, Vol. 39, No. 11, pp. 975–986, 2007.
Wang, H., “A unit-cell approach for lightweight structure and compliant mechanism,” Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005.
Chang, P. S. and Rosen, D. W., “The Size Matching and Scaling Method: A Synthesis Method for the Design of Mesoscale Cellular Structures,” Int. J. Comp. Int. Manuf., DOI:10.1080/0951192X.2011.650880.
Seepersad, C. C., Allen, J. K., McDowell, D. L., and Mistree, F., “Robust design of cellular materials with topological and dimension imperfections,” J. Mech. Des., Vol. 128, No.6, pp. 1285–1297.
Nguyen, J., Park, S. I., and Rosen, D. W., “Heuristic Optimization Method for Cellular Structure Design of Light Weight Components,” Proc. of ISGMA, 2012.
Malvern, L. E., “Introduction to the Mechanics of a Continuous Medium,” Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Chu, C., Engelbrecht, S., Graf, G. C., and Rosen, D. W, “A comparison of synthesis methods for cellular structures with application to additive manufacturing,” Rapid Proto. J., Vol. 16, No.4, pp. 275–283, 2010.
Portugal, L. F., Judice, J. J., and Vicente, L. N., “A comparison of block pivoting and interior point algorithms for linear least squares problems with nonnegative variables,” Math. Comp., Vol. 63, pp. 625–643, 1994.
DARPA Public Affairs, “Can You Design, Build, and Fly the Next Generation UAV?” http://science.dodlive.mil (Accessed 4 May 2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nguyen, J., Park, Si. & Rosen, D. Heuristic optimization method for cellular structure design of light weight components. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 14, 1071–1078 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-013-0144-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-013-0144-5