Novel topological design of 3D Kagome structure for additive manufacturing

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present a new topology method in designing the lightweight and complex structures for 3D printing.

Design/methodology/approach

Computer-aided design (CAD) and topology design are the two main approaches for 3D truss lattices designing in 3D printing. Though these two ways have their own advantages and have been used by the researchers in different engineering situations, these two methods seem to be incompatible. A novel topology method is presented in this paper which can combine the merits of both CAD and topology design. It is generally based on adding materials to insufficient parts in a given structure so the resulting topology evolves toward an optimum.

Findings

By using the topology method, an optimized-Kagome structure is designed and both 3D original-Kagome structure and 3D optimized-Kagome structure are manufactured by fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer with ABS and the compression tests results show that the 3D optimized-Kagome has a higher specific stiffness and strength than the original one.

Originality/value

The presented topology method is the first work that using the original structure-based topology algorithm other than a boundary condition-based topology algorithm for 3D printing lattice and it can be considered as general way to optimize a commonly used light-weight lattice structure in strength and stiffness.

Citation

Wang, R., Shang, J., Li, X., Wang, Z. and Luo, Z. (2018), "Novel topological design of 3D Kagome structure for additive manufacturing", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 261-269. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-01-2017-0015