Design of Customized TPU Lattice Structures for Additive Manufacturing: Influence on the Functional Properties in Elastic Products

Abstract

This work focuses on evaluating and establishing the relationship of the influence of geometrical and manufacturing parameters in stiffness of additively manufactured TPU lattice structures. The contribution of this work resides in the creation of a methodology that focuses on characterizing the behavior of elastic lattice structures. Likewise, resides in the possibility of using the statistical treatment of results as a guide to find favorable possibilities within the range of parameters studied and to predict the behavior of the structures. In order to characterize their behavior, different types of specimens were designed and tested by finite element simulation of a compression process using Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools. The tests showed that the stiffness depends on the topology of the cells of the lattice structure. For structures with different cell topologies, it has been possible to obtain an increase in the reaction force against compression from 24.7 N to 397 N for the same manufacturing conditions. It was shown that other parameters with a defined influence on the stiffness of the structure were the temperature and the unit size of the cells, all due to the development of fusion mechanisms and the variation in the volume of material used, respectively.