Page 44 - eBook_Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Manufacturing V2

Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Manufacturing –
Volume 2

INTRODUCTION

Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing has revolutionised
the manufacturing of complex shapes and made the fabrication of
customised structures with designed properties possible. 3D
printing is increasingly being applied to industry and academia. It
differs from other similar and subtractive manufacturing
techniques. The novel technology introduces new challenges and
opportunities across different domains (Lu, Li & Tian, 2015). It is
very material accurate in deposition technology, which benefits
most in manufacturing and designing of intricate internal
structure, such as lattices. Cellular structures, such as lattices,
provide optimum properties lightness, energy absorption, and
vibration damping Hence, huge research and application is done
across a broad area from aviation to bio-engineering and many
other areas. The incorporation of AM has brought an immense
leap in the design and production of intricate lattice structures,
another landmark in advancements of lattice structures as are
greatly in demand because of their large strength-to-weight ratios,
and are apt for light (Chopra, 2011) and strong component
applications; lattice structures have much better benefits
compared to solid structures in the design of light-weight yet high-
strength components (Kang et al., 2019; Zhang, Xu, Zang & Feng,
2020). In this study, lattice infilled beams composed of PLA are
examined. Having different lattice geometries in the core of the
beam, its bending strength was anticipated to be increased by
having a constant volume and porosity to enable a direct
comparison of the infill structures. A number of geometries of
lattices that comprise strut-based (BCC, FCC, Kelvin, octet, HX
HC, TRI HC, fluorite, diamond) and a triply periodic minimal
surface (TPMS) derived gyroid have been chosen to study their
influence on the mechanical response of the beams (Lin, Pan &
Li, 2022). Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) are minimal
area surfaces formed by closed curves and are the foundation for
TPMS scaffolds. These scaffolds are made by increasing
thickness of the TPMS unit cell to form cubically symmetrical
structure with periodically repeated interconnected pores (Dong
& Zhao, 2021).

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