Design for additive manufacturing of cellular structures

Design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) refers to the design of personalized and customized, lightweight but strong enough objects that can be manufactured using additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. DfAM techniques enable designers to create complex geometries to eliminate manufacturing difficulties, minimize manufacturing time, and reduce the need for assembly, and logistic costs. The unique capabilities of AM enable the designers to use DfAM techniques for the creation of more complex geometries such as cellular lattice structures and metamaterials that enable them to realize more realistic and functionally optimized designs for a specific application. In this chapter, we intend to discuss DfAM, in particular for cellular lattice structure design, optimization, and fabrication. Several categories of structures and the methods of designing are described in detail, followed by their applications, with the help of case studies for different industries. Furthermore, the challenges of designing, modeling, and fabrication of cellular structures and recent attempts to fix these issues are also discussed briefly.