COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE COMPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR OF TPMS GRADED LATTICE STRUCTURES VERSUS PRIMITIVE TPM LATTICE STRUCTURES PRODUCED BY ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Additive manufacturing (AM) provides an opportunity to fabricate complex geometries such as lattice structures that have unique mechanical, thermal, and fluid-dynamic properties, which are difficult to achieve using traditional subtractive methods. Lattice structures are utilized in the lightweight of automotive and aerostructures, sandwich cores, energy absorption, and blast protection. To ensure that the lattice-structured parts meet the required design criteria such as stiffness and strength, it is important to predict their mechanical behavior accurately. Triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) are widely used for designing lattice structures due to their unique geometric properties. Although graded TPMS lattice structures have been shown to improve their mechanical properties by tailoring their properties across the structure, there is still a lack of understanding of how the graded structure affects their compressive behavior. This study aims to compare the compressive behavior of the Schwarz-diamond (SD) TPMS lattice structures for graded and primitive produced by additive manufacturing. Finite element analysis is used to capture the effect of both lattice structures on the mechanical behavior. This study provides valuable insights into the compressive behavior of SD-TPMS lattice structures and contributes to improved design and optimization techniques for additive-manufactured lattice structures.