Designing Trade-off Properties with Mono Material by 3D Curving Lattice Structures

A study conducted by Takashi Sasagawa et al. was published in the Additive Manufacturing.

Mono-material design is an effective way to achieve sustainability and a circular economy. However, most industrial products are manufactured using a variety of materials to create multifunctional properties and characteristics. One way to resolve this trade-off is varying local structures of a mono material to achieve a wide range of mechanical properties. For example, Young’s modulus can be modified by adjusting the relative density of the structures. However, for 3D-printed components, the lower limit of relative density depends on the achievable dimensional accuracy.

In this paper, we propose a novel flexible lattice structure to expand the range of mechanical property control. The key is realizing slender, tilted struts by curving the struts of a conventional lattice structure. The resulting structures exhibited approximately 40 times greater flexibility than body-centered cubic and octet truss lattices at the same relative density. Furthermore, by controlling the relative density from 13.3% to 100%, we achieved Young’s modulus and static energy absorption values approximately over 1,000 times.
This technology is expected to contribute significantly to the reuse of resources.

Title: Flexible Lattice Structure Using Curved Struts Based on Body-centered Cubic Structure
Authors: Sasagawa, T., Nimura, N., Tanaka, M.
Journal Name: Additive Manufacturing
Published: April 5, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2025.104746