Lightweight design with metallic additively manufactured cellular structures

Lightweight design is essential in modem product development and is prevalent in automotive, aerospace, and biomedical applications. The utilization of cellular structure, aided by advancements in additive manufacturing, is among the most effective methods for achieving lightweight design without sacrificing structural integrity and functionality. In this paper, a stress-based structural optimization method is proposed for the design of lightweight components filled with octet functionally graded cellular structures fabricated using selective laser melting (SLM) with the AlSi10Mg alloy. The proposed method includes two main parts: the homogenization-based characterization of SLM-octet-cellular structures and the utilization of the characterized cellular structures for lightweight structure optimum design. Tensile and compression experiments were utilized to validate the proposed homogenization-based characterization method, showing that the simulation and experimental results were in agreement. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed design optimization method was validated using the three-point bending beam design problem. The experimental results revealed that components filled with functionally graded cellular structures can withstand 15.25% more load than those with uniform cellular structures. This investigation presents a complete, validated, and industry-oriented lightweight design method, which is useful for the development of future green products.