Homogenization of Mechanical Properties for Material Extrusion Periodic Lattice Structures Considering Joint Stiffening Effects

Many engineering applications utilize periodic lattice structures to take advantage of their favorable and tailorable mechanical properties. However, manufacturing the structures and evaluating their mechanical properties are still challenging. Additive manufacturing (AM) processes offer an alternative method to fabricate periodic lattice structures but the processes only approximate bounding part surfaces. Periodic lattice structures generally have two important geometrical characteristics, large bounding surfaces, and a large number of joints. Since geometric approximation errors on large bounding surfaces critically affect mechanical properties of the structures, designers and engineers should incorporate this degradation into mechanical property estimation procedures. In addition, the effects of joints should be analyzed in the estimation process, because joints reduce struts lengths, and as a result, they add stiffness to lattice structures. This paper presents a new homogenization approach to estimate mechanical properties of additively manufactured periodic lattice structures that is based on semirigid joint frame elements, and it takes into account effects of geometric approximation errors and joint stiffening. Effective structural parameters of a semirigid joint frame element are calculated from an as-fabricated voxel model to incorporate the geometric approximation errors. The semirigid joint frame element is integrated into a discrete homogenization process to evaluate joint stiffening effects. This paper reports results of parametric studies that investigate effects of AM process and joint properties on periodic lattice structures fabricated by material extrusion. This paper also compares estimates from the proposed approach and conventional homogenization approaches with test results. The comparison shows that the proposed method provides estimates that are more accurate.