Development of Predictive Models for Material Properties of Lattice Structures

Lattice structures are an adaption of the microscopic crystalline structures in chemistry to the mesoscopic design space of material science and mechanical engineering. They are structures created through the tessellation of unit cells in three dimensions. They present an appealing alternative to solid materials and other geometric design due to the ability to directly customise their performance and behaviour through modification of their design parameters – enabling a greater range of possible material properties when compared to solid materials – as well as showing multifunctional capabilities. While Additive Manufacturing has enabled the production of these structures and thus a resulting increase in research, a similar level of adoption has not been seen in industry. A key factor for this is the current lack of a methodology by which lattice design parameters can be selected based on the performance required from the component. To facilitate this selection, it is integral to understand the relationship between the lattice design parameters and the resulting material properties. In this paper, empirical models are developed by using several lattice types to quantify the relations between lattice design and materials. Test results show that the developed models accurately predict the relations between materials and lattice structures for designers to incorporate them into their designs.