Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

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Materials & Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Transition boundaries and stiffness optimal design for multi-TPMS

lattices
Fangxi Ren a, Changdong Zhang a,⇑, Wenhe Liao a, Tingting Liu a, Dawei Li a, Xin Shi a, Weiming Jiang a,
Cong Wang a, Junfeng Qi b, Yi Chen b, Zhen Wang b
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, PR China
b
Beijing Spacecrafts, China Academy of Space Technology, 104 You YI Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t

The unique function mapping unique

TPMS lattice cells can significantly
improve the structural performance.

The interface of Multi-TPMS lattice
can effectively transfer loads and
retard crack propagation.

The stiffness of optimized bending
specimen is increased by 31%
compared with the traditional TPMS
lattice.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Nature has skillfully and finely optimized porous structures with specific configurations in different
Received 7 June 2021 regions according to the service requirements of organisms, thus evolving the heterogeneous structure
Revised 5 August 2021 with multiple functions. In order to further improve the performance and function of the heterogeneous
Accepted 21 August 2021
structure, an optimal design method of multi-scale and Multi-TPMS lattices with geometric continuity is
Available online 23 August 2021
proposed in this paper. The geometrical continuity problem of complex transition boundary of Multi-
TPMS lattice is solved, and correlation mapping between principal stress direction and lattice type is
Keywords:
established. In mesoscopic view, density model is used to represent the effective properties of lattice
Multi-TPMS lattices
Geometric continuity
structure. Macroscopically, the design domain is divided into Stretch- and shear-dominated region
Multi-scale according to the principal stress direction. By mapping specific lattice cells in different stress regions,
Design optimization the unique properties of different lattice cells are fully utilized to improve the mechanical properties.
The experimental results show that the stiffness and strength of the optimized samples are increased
by 31% and 21%, respectively, compared with the traditional TPMS gradient density lattice.
Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of additive manufacturing (AM),

⇑ Corresponding author.
the design and manufacturing freedom of complex lightweight lat-
E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Zhang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2021.110062
0264-1275/Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

tice structures is extremely high, which brings new opportunities region by increasing local volume fraction, but this method is dif-
for breakthroughs in the performance and function of lightweight ficult to achieve when the transition boundary is complex.
components [1,2]. Compared with traditional solid materials and
homogeneous structures, lattice structures can obtain excellent 1.2. Compression performance of lattice structures
mechanical properties by adjusting the material distribution and
structural parameters [3,4]. With the continued development of Many studies have focused on the compression performance of
this technology, higher requirements have placed on lightweight lattice structures. During compression, lattice structures usually
lattice design to improve the mechanical properties of structures. exhibit three distinct response stages: an elastic stage, a plastic
To cope with this challenge, scholars have begun to seek structural stage and a densification stage [18]. Researchers have systemati-
optimization design methods with ultrahigh performance and cally explored the mechanical properties and failure modes of
functionality [5,6], and nature has provided rich design inspiration homogeneous lattice structures through numerical simulations
[7]. As seen in Fig. 1, there are a large number of porous structures and physical experiments [18–21] and found that the mechanical
with strange shapes in abalone shells, bamboo, mantis shrimp and properties and relative density obey the scaling law, which is con-
other organisms. Through the reasonable allocation of lattice units sistent with the conclusion obtained by the homogenization
and layers, the structural strength and stiffness are significantly method [22,23]. In addition, functionally graded lattice structures
improved [8–10], which opens up new pathways for the design have been extensively studied to regulate the mechanical proper-
of functional gradient heterostructures. ties and deformation patterns of structures [3,24–26]. Bai et al.
[27] studied the compression performance of lattice structures
1.1. Design method of lattice structures with different rotation angles to accurately obtain the influence
law of the orientation angle on the mechanical properties of lattice
Design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) has been widely structures. In addition, Li et al. [28] effectively controlled the direc-
investigated over the last decade to fully exploit the potential tion of crack propagation by combining truss structures with dif-
brought by AM [12]. Various approaches for the effective genera- ferent orientation angles. Al-Ketan et al. [11,26,29–31] studied
tion and design of lightweight lattice structures have been studied the influence of structural parameters on the failure behavior
according to the design form of the lattice structure, which mainly and mechanical properties of heterogeneous lattice structures.
includes the truss structure based on node control [13] and the tri- Compared with original lattice structures with a single unit config-
ply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structure based on an implicit uration, the multi-morphology lattice structures composed of dif-
function [14]. In addition, heterogeneous lattice structures are also ferent topological configurations further expanded the design
widely concerned. Yang et al. [15] used the method based on a sig- space of lattice structures.
moid function and a Gaussian radial basis function to construct
heterogeneous lattices, and combine substructures using spatial 1.3. Optimization design of lattice structures
partition method [16]. However, these methods cannot adjust the
structures in the hybrid regions, and the hybrid region is prone Various methods to optimize the ultralightweight design of lat-
to produce structures of minimal size and topological discontinu- tice structures have also been studied, among which the functional
ity, which means that the carrying capacity will be significantly gradient lattice structure is the most typical optimization design
reduced. On this basis, Maskery et al. [17] improved the hybrid method. Li and Lin et al. [32–34] proposed a topology optimization

Fig. 1. Porous structures in nature. (a) Local properties change gradually [8]; (b) local properties vary continuously across the interface between dissimilar components [8];
(c) abalone shell [11]; (d) bamboo [9]; (e) mantis shrimp [11].

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

method based on homogenization and directly applied the scaling where X ¼ 2pL x,Y ¼ 2pL y,Z ¼ 2pL z, and L can be used to control the size of
law to the optimization process to obtain an optimal gradient dis- a single cell, and the cell relative densityq can be controlled by the
tribution. To give full play to the high stiffness of topology opti- parameter t. Fig. 2 shows the relationship between the theoretical
mization and the self-supporting characteristics of lattice relative density of TPMS cells and the parameter t within a certain
structures, Mohsen and Dong et al. [35,36] developed a hybrid relative density range. The relationship between the two is approx-
optimization design method of a topological framework and lattice imately quadratic, and the relative density decreases with increas-
structure to improve the mechanical properties of the structure ing t value.
and increase the manufacturability. In addition, by setting the cor-
responding performance lattice type in an appropriate area, 2.2. Multi-TPMS lattices
researchers can adapt the local characteristics of the structure to
specific requirements, thus generating a variety of performance Multi-TPMS lattices is a polymorphic structure composed of
advantages globally [37–39]. For example, Sanjairaj et al. [40] used two or more TPMS cells in a specific connection mode [15,44,46].
a multi-morphology lattice to simulate a microbone structure to At the intersection of different lattice cells, there is a special struc-
avoid ‘‘stress shielding”. Ryan et al. [41] combined different truss ture that can smoothly connects the two morphologies. To better
structures with topology optimization methods to improve energy describe the overall structure, it is common to use the following
absorption efficiency, and the use of multiple unit cell architec- expression:
tures was also explored by Pham et al. [42] to increase damage tol-
erance by mimicking crystalline materials with precipitates and £ ¼ uðX Þ£1 þ ð1  uðX ÞÞ£2 ð4Þ
multiple phases. However, although the performance of lattice
where £1 and £2 are the function expressions corresponding to two
structures obtained from the above studies was improved, previ-
kinds of TPMS lattice cells, as in Eqs. (1)–(3); X is the spatial coordi-
ous studies [37,43] have divided lattice types based on the limit
nate point; and uðX Þ is a spatial weight function with a value
size of the rod diameters that can be manufactured by the LPBF
between [0,1]. The smooth transition between the two structures
process, which could not give full play to the unique properties
depends on the choice of the weight function uðX Þ. Yang et al.
of different lattice structures. In addition, the selection of lattice
[15] introduced the Sigmoid Function (SF) as the weight function
type is closely related to the stress conditions, but the mapping
uðX Þ.
relationship between lattice type and stress has not been studied,
which restricts the flexibility and expansibility of heterogeneous uðx; y; zÞ ¼ 1þekG
1
ðx;y;zÞ ð5Þ
lattice design.
This paper mainly through the unique structure mapping where Gðx; y; zÞ is the transition boundary function and k describes
unique performance, so as to achieve the overall performance the transition width between the two lattice types; a larger value of
and function of the significant improvement of the structure. Here, k will show a narrower transition region, as shown in Fig. 3(a). Fig. 3
we propose an advanced optimization design method that fully (b) and (c) show the P-G Multi-TPMS lattices with different k values
takes into account the geometrical continuity of the transition transiting along a single direction. It can be seen in the figure that
region of Multi-TPMS lattices and the overall stiffness and strength the transition region is prone to produce minimal size and topolog-
of the structure. Our greatest contribution is to divide the design ically discontinuous structures, which means that the carrying
domain into stretch- and shear-dominated regions according to capacity will be significantly reduced and stress concentration can
the principal stress direction, which was not present in previous easily occur. In addition, the existence of extremely small size also
studies [37,43]. And by introducing the weight function as the local brings manufacturing difficulties.
parameter of lattice cells, the geometric continuity of the transition
region is improved, and the previously proposed Multi-lattices uni- 2.3. Transition boundaries optimization of multi-TPMS lattices
fied function is improved [15,44]. Besides, our proposed method
can be extended to 3D. In order to solve the geometric feature mutation problem of the
transition region in Multi-TPMS lattices caused by the traditional
method in 2.2, an improved Multi-TPMS lattices design method
2. Design of Multi-TPMS lattices is proposed. By introducing the weight functionuðX Þ as the local

2.1. TPMS description

Lattice structures are derived from triply periodic minimal sur-

faces (TPMS), which can extend indefinitely in space and have zero
mean curvature [45]. The level set approximate equation is the
simplest and most used method to describe TPMS [46]. The level
set equations of several typical TPMS lattice cells are expressed
as follows:
Tub-Primitive (P):
£P ¼ ðcosX þ cosY þ cosZ Þ
 0:51ðcosXcosY þ cosYcosZ þ cosXcosZ Þ ¼ t ð1Þ
Schoen-Gyroid (G):
£G ¼ sinXcosY þ sinYcosZ þ sinZcosX ¼ t ð2Þ
Schoen-I-WP (IWP):
£IWP ¼ ðcos XcosY þ cos YcosZ þ cos XcosZ Þ
ð3Þ
0:5ðcos2X þ cos2Y þ cos2Z Þ ¼ t
Fig. 2. Variation in the relative density q with the parameter t.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 3. Design of Multi-TPMS lattices by SF method. (a) The Sigmoid Function; (b-c) P-G Multi-TPMS lattices with different k values, k = 3 in (b) and k = 10 in (c).

parameters of the two types of lattice cells, the transition region The curve fitting based on the FREP operation defines the point
distribution between the material topologies is improved, and set through the continuous real function of the point coordinates,
the thickness of the connecting rod is increased to achieve the and the point membership depends on the symbol of the evalua-
smooth transition between the two types of lattice. tion definition function at the point. Usually, the points with pos-
itive function values and zero function values are included in the
£ ¼ lðX Þð£1 þ a  ð1  lðX ÞÞ þ ð1  lðX ÞÞð£2 þ b  lðX ÞÞ ð6Þ
set, in which the zero-valued subset is regarded as the boundary.
where a and b are used to adjust the density change gradient of the According to the point member relation, the boundary is divided
transition of the two lattice types, and the size of the value is related into several curves that can be easily represented by functions,
to the difference between the relative densities of £1 and £2 . Fig. 4 and the intersection, union and subtraction of the curves are car-
shows three Multi-TPMS lattices along a single direction transition ried out to realize the function fitting of a complex boundary.
boundary, where k ¼ 3. It can be seen that the proposed method can To represent the Multi-TPMS lattices with arbitrary curve tran-
achieve a smooth transition between different density differences sition boundaries, Fig. 5 shows several 2D and 3D examples. The
and lattice types. red curve indicates that Gðx; y; zÞ ¼ 0 and the corresponding weight
By comparing Fig. 3(b) and Fig. 4(b), the method proposed in function uðx; y; zÞ ¼ 1=2, which realizes a reasonable weight value
this paper presents a good fusion effect. The topological continuity corresponding to any point in the space. The strategy ensures the
of the structure is increased and the transition region fracture is geometric connectivity of any spatial combination of lattice struc-
avoided, which is of great significance to improving the structural tures. This allows one to optimize the configuration distribution at
performance. macroscopic scale and the design of mesoscopic lattice structure,
However, just as the lattice cells and interlayer configurations thus further improving the overall structural performance.
in organisms often present irregular transition boundaries, it is dif-
ficult to construct a boundary function Gðx; y; zÞ directly. This paper
introduces a special class of function representation (FREP) opera- 3. Stiffness optimization for Multi-TPMS lattices
tions defined by the R function. This operation is based on the
set theory operation [47], and the function is defined as follows. The results of transition boundaries optimization for Multi-
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi TPMS lattices expands the space for further improving the
2
f 1 [0 f 2 ¼ f 1 þ f 2 þ f 1 þ f 2
2
ð7Þ mechanical performance of lattice structure. In this section, we
propose a stiffness optimization method for Multi-TPMS lattices.
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Firstly, the standard SIMP method was used to optimize the topol-
f 1 \0 f 2 ¼ f 1 þ f 2 
2
f1 þ f2
2
ð8Þ
ogy of the input model, thus obtain the optimal density distribu-
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi tion and principal stress direction of the voxel element. Then,
f 1 g0 f 2 ¼ f 1  f 2 
2
f1 þ f2
2
ð9Þ two types of TPMS lattice cells with stretch- and bending-
dominated were selected. The effect of orientation angle on the
where f 1 and f 2 are the initial defined functions, [0 , \0 , and g0 are mechanical properties of lattice structures was calculated using
the symbols of the R function, which is equivalent to union, inter- the homogenized elastic matrix, thus establish the correlation
section and subtraction of a set. mapping between lattice type and principal stress direction.

Fig. 4. The improved SF method. (a) a ¼ 4:5; b ¼ 0; (b) a ¼ 3; b ¼ 0:15; (c) a ¼ 1; b ¼ 0:8.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 5. Arbitrarily bounded Multi-TPMS lattices. (a) Embedded transition boundary; (b) Curve discretization; (c) Distribution control of lattice type in 3D.

Finally, the obtained optimal density distribution and lattice con- The objective function f ðq; U Þ represents the structural strain
figuration distribution are mapped to Multi-TPMS lattices design energy, and K ðqÞ represents the overall stiffness matrix. The first
process. The complete optimization design process is shown in constraint is the equilibrium equation, the second constraint limits
Fig. 6. the volume design to V  , and the final constraint requires that the
topological unit density be bounded by the minimum relative den-
3.1. Topology optimization sity and the maximum relative density.
The optimization problem is solved with the OC optimizer and
Topology optimization provides the solution of the optimal the material interpolation model in the standard SIMP method. In
material distribution in design space, and it is effective and reason- order to obtain the density field and stress field of the voxel.
able to guide lattice structure design through density distribution Among them, the density field is used to map the density distribu-
generated by topology optimization [48]. The objective function tion of lattice structure. The stress field is used to calculate the
of the optimization was set to minimize the strain energy. The principal stress direction and adjust distribution control of the lat-
optimization objective equation is shown in Eq. (10): tice type.

Objiectiv e : f ðq; U Þ ¼ U T K ðqÞU ð10Þ

3.2. Structure-performance correlation mapping
Subject : K ðqÞU ¼ F#
Selection of a unit lattice is the most important in the lattice-
X
n based structure design. According to the deformation and failure
V ¼ viq modes, it can be divided into stretch- and bending-dominated
i¼1 structures, as shown in the Fig. 7. Struts of stretch-dominated lat-
tice have loading mode of tensile or compression beams which
0  qmin  q  qmax  1 have small deformation along the strut, and the struts have higher

Fig. 6. Design process and case study.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

elastic modulus and strength. However, unlike bending-dominated lished, and the stress region of the structure was divided into ten-
structures, the stretch-dominated structures produced a softening sile region and bending deformation resistance region, mainly
post-yield response due to the buckling of the struts during com- following the following principles:
pression, resulting in poor ductility. While struts of bending-
dominated lattice have loading mode of bending beams which (1) TPMS units with good machinability are preferred for non-
have large deformation depending on strut length and stress con- load-bearing regions existing in the structure.
h  
i
centration on the joint of the structure, and the stress-strain (2) When the principal stress direction is within 30 ; 60 , the
response has a long flat platform.
region is mainly resistant to bending deformation, and the
Because the structure in the actual working environment gener-
bending-dominated IWP lattice cell should be selected.
ally has tension and compression stress and bending deformation
(3) When the principal stress direction is within
resistance region, it is obviously unreasonable to use single lattice h  
 S  
i
structure as the optimal design. Therefore, the stretch -dominated 0 ; 30 60 ; 90 , the region is mainly subjected to ten-
P lattice cell and the bending-dominated IWP lattice cell were sion and compression stress, and the stretch-dominated P
selected as two typical structures for lightweight design in this lattice cell should be selected.
paper. By partitioning the functional properties of the structures,
those specific TPMS lattice cells were mapped into different stress
regions to give full play to the unique properties of different lattice 4. Numerical case and experimental verification
structures, so as to achieve significant improvement of mechanical
properties. The proposed transition boundaries and stiffness optimal
In standard coordinates, when the relative density is 35%, the design for Multi-TPMS lattices was implemented by C++ program-
Young’s modulus of P lattice cell is about 2.4 times that of IWP lat- ming in Visual Studio platform. In order to verify the effectiveness
tice cell, while the shear modulus is only about 1/2 that of IWP lat- of the proposed method, finite element analysis and experimental
tice cell. By comparing the designs of two lattice cells in a series of verification were carried out.
orientations, as shown in Fig. 8, the IWP lattice has a higher
h  
i
Young’s modulus when the orientation angle is 30 ; 60 . In addi- 4.1. Material properties
tion, by changing the relative density and repeat the homogeniza-
The mechanical properties of standard plate tensile specimens
tion process to recalculate the Young’s modulus, can get the same
were tested at room temperature. The loading rate was set to
conclusion. This indicates that when the lattice cell filling angle is
2mm=min according to ISO 527-1-2012 test standard, and the
constant and the force is loaded along the a angle range, the IWP
deformation of the specimen under tensile force was measured
lattice cell has a high bearing capacity. When the other angle
with an optical extensor. The fracture of the sample occurred
ranges were applied, P lattice cell has better mechanical properties.
within the range of standard distance, and the stress-strain curve
Based on this conclusion, the correlation mapping between
of the material is shown in Fig. 9. Therefore, the tensile elastic
TPMS lattice cell type and principal stress direction was estab-
modulus is 1342  2 MPa and the yield strength is 33:3  1 MPa.

Fig. 7. Stress distribution of stretch- and bending-dominated lattice cells. (a) Strut force diagram; (b) Stress distribution.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 8. 3D space representation of effective Young’s modulus surfaces with lattice structures. (a) P lattice cell Young’s modulus; (b) IWP lattice cell Young’s modulus; (c)
Young’s modulus for the two lattice cells at 35% density in the x-y plane.

4.2. L-shaped beam design (b), Multi-TPMS lattices can locally reduce the stress value and
make the local stress of the structure reach equilibrium.
In this example, Fig. 10(a) shows the model size and working
conditions of L-shaped beam. The 4 mm cell size was chosen as
4.3. Three-point bending experiment and simulation
the average mesh size, and the L-beam was then divided into
180 grids. The target volume parameter was set as 0.23, the mini-
To prove the effectiveness of the proposed method, a three-
mum and maximum relative densities were set as
point bending test was carried out, and the size of the specimen
qmin ¼ 0:15; qmax ¼ 0:5. The optimization method described in
was 160  32  40 mm3 . Considering the porous characteristics
Section 3 is implemented, and the optimization process and results
of the lattice structure, support plates and grooves were added to
of L-beam are shown in Fig. 10.
the specimen to avoid unstable constraints at the loading and
In addition, under the same density distribution, the generated
boundary during the experiment. The displacement load was
gradient P and IWP surfaces are compared with Multi-TPMS lat-
applied vertically to the grooves on the upper surface of the beam,
tices. As shown in Fig. 11, the simulation results show that
and the displacement boundary constraints were applied to the left
Multi-TPMS lattices has stronger stiffness, and the equivalent stiff-
and right support plates, as shown in Fig. 13(a). Considering the
ness is increased by 17.6% compared with the gradient P surface.
SLA AM process constraints and scale effect, a 4 mm single cell size
Compared with the gradient IWP surface, the equivalent stiffness
was selected as the average grid size, and the three-point bending
is increased by 90.4%. Meanwhile, by comparing Fig. 12(a) and
beam was divided into 3200 grids. The target volume parameter is
set to 0.3. The minimum and maximum relative densities were set
as qmin ¼ 0:15 and qmax ¼ 0:7, considering the manufacturing limit
size and retaining the overall porosity. Fig. 13(b) shows the grays-
cale diagram of the density distribution of the optimized results.
According to the principle of selection of lattice type in 3.2, the
solid three-point bending resistance model was simulated by the
finite element method, and the stress region was divided to map
lattice type attributes, as shown in Fig. 13(d). To prove the high
stiffness and deformation resistance of the proposed method, sev-
eral groups of comparative experiments were designed under the
same density. Fig. 14 (a-e) shows the density mapping model
and the model manufactured by the photocuring process.
For the three-point bending experiment, a pressure head with a
radius of 2:5mm was used on a universal testing machine
(UTM5105-G, China), and the displacement load was loaded at a
rate of 1 mm=min until the structural fracture. The load displace-
ment results of the design model are shown in Fig. 15(b). The
experimental results show that the failure modes of these models
are obviously different. For quantitative analysis, the stiffness and
bending strength are shown in Table 1. Compared with the gradi-
ent P surface, the equivalent stiffness and bending strength of
Multi-TPMS lattices are increased by 31:1% and 21:3%, respec-
Fig. 9. Stress-strain curve of material. tively. Compared with the gradient IWP surface, the equivalent
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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 10. L-shaped beam design problem. (a) Model; (b) Density distribution; (c) Direction of principal stress; (d) Functional division; (e) The optimization results.

the optimal design method of Multi-TPMS lattices proposed in this

study has both high stiffness and deformation-resistance capabil-
ity. We will discuss the reasons for the excellent mechanical prop-
erties of the Multi-TPMS lattices in Section 4.4.
Since the three-point bending beam is symmetrical, we only
choose the left part for simulation analysis and explanation. We
applied the same force load and compared the maximum deflec-
tion change and stress distribution of the structure. Fig. 16 shows
the simulated stress distribution and displacement changes. The
results show that the stiffness of the structure is consistent with
the experimental results, and the stress distribution of the Multi-
TPMS lattices is more uniform.

4.4. Macroscale perspective of failure behavior

It can be seen in Fig. 17 that several models have different frac-

ture behaviors, which indicates that the topological mode of rod
diameter and the distribution of topological unit types have a great
influence on structural performance. Fig. 17 (a) and (b) shows that
Fig. 11. Comparison of different lattice mapping performance. the Multi-TPMS lattices and gradient IWP surface showed similar
deformation failure modes. The initial crack extension occurred

along the 45 direction from the surface protection. The difference
stiffness and bending strength of the heterogeneous lattice struc-
is that the Multi-TPMS lattices failure modes was relatively obvi-
ture are increased by 80:3% and 42:2%, respectively. In addition,
ous at the interface between different lattices, which may be
it is much higher than the uniform structure. This indicates that
because the existence of the interface hindered the extension of

Fig. 12. L-shaped beam stress distribution. (a) L-shaped beam: P-IWP; (b) L-shaped beam: P; (c) L-shaped beam: IWP.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

cracks, making the region material yield but still maintaining its
strength. The structural dislocation glide produced different forms
of damage and could withstand greater resistance to deformation
ability. In Fig. 17 (c) and (e), the gradient P-surface and uniform
P-surface break from the midpoint span of the three-point bending
beam, and then the crack expands to the groove, which is consis-
tent with the deformation behavior in the general bending test.
Interestingly, we observed a deformation pattern similar to the
‘‘Y” shape in Fig. 17(d) of the uniform IWP surface, which may be
due to the existence of grooves, resulting in uniform yield stress
on both sides of the grooves and symmetrical deformation and fail-
ure behaviors of the uniform IWP surface.
According to the previous analysis and experimental data, the
Multi-TPMS lattices shows excellent mechanical properties. For
the topological structure composed of a single configuration,
because the same lattice elements exist in the design area, the
same topological form exists in space. When the load exceeds
the yield point of the material, local high stress zones will appear,
leading to catastrophic damage of the material, and with the pro-
gress of the failure, the stress along the deformation direction will
increase sharply, resulting in a rapid collapse of the structure. For a
structure composed of two different topology directions in a Multi-
TPMS lattices, two structures will influence the process of carrying
different ‘‘characters” (in this case, we believe that the two struc-
tures should show significantly different mechanical behaviors,
as either resistance and compressive stress, or resistance to bend-
Fig. 13. Three-point bending design problem. (a) Model; (b) Density distribution;
(c) Direction of principal stress; (d) Functional division; (e) The optimization
ing deformation). During the deformation process, the stress
results. mainly occurs as resistance to the strong regional extension; the

Fig. 14. Design and manufacture of five kinds of three-point bending beams. (a) Grade-P-IWP; (b) Grade-IWP; (c) Grade-P; (d) Uni-IWP; (e) Uni-P.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 15. Bending experiments. (a) Three-point bending diagram; (b) load-displacement curve.

Table 1
Mechanical properties of five lattice structures.

Type Quality/g Max load/N Max deflection/mm stiffness/(N/mm) Bending strength/MPa

Grade-P-IWP 84.6 1993.6 2.5 797.4 9.1
Grade-IWP 84.1 1415.4 3.2 442.3 6.4
Grade-P 85.1 1642.6 2.7 608.4 7.5
Uni-IWP 84.2 795.4 3.1 256.6 3.6
Uni-P 85.2 939 2.6 361.2 4.3

Fig. 16. FEA. (a) Grade-P-IWP; (b) Grade-IWP; (c) Grade-P; (d) Uni-IWP; (e) Uni-P.

property increases the structural resistance to deformation ability 4.5. Application: quadcopter’s arm optimization
and enhances structural stiffness. In addition, due to the existence
of interfaces between different structures, the transmission of In order to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed
deformation and failure can be effectively controlled, which shows method, an optimization case of a quadcopter arm is given in this
excellent mechanical properties on a macro level. section. As shown in Fig. 18 (a), there are four holes on the left side

10
F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

In this optimization case, the target volume fraction is set as

0.35, and the minimum density and maximum density are set as
qmin ¼ 0:15 and qmin ¼ 0:7 respectively. The optimization results
are shown in Fig. 18 (b). In addition, two traditional density gradi-
ent lattice structures were designed for comparison, and the model
was manufactured using an SLA process, as shown in Fig. 19 (a).
According to the given boundary conditions and load condi-
tions, the fixture is designed and physical experiments are carried
out. The experimental results show in Table 2 that, the equivalent
stiffness of Multi-TPMS lattices are increased by 16.9% and 47.8%,
respectively, compared with the traditional Grade-P and Grade-
IWP gradient lattice. This indicates that under a given load, the
deformation of the quadcopter is smaller, and the anti-
deformation ability of the structure is significantly improved. At
the same time, the flexibility and extensibility of the proposed
design method are further verified in 3D.

5. Conclusion

To improve the structural stiffness, a transition boundaries and

stiffness optimal design for Multi-TPMS lattices is proposed in this
paper to solve the geometric continuity problem of complex tran-
sition boundary Multi-TPMS lattices and establish the correlation
mapping of lattice type performance attributes. According to the
research in this paper, the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) Compared with a traditional TPMS uniform lattice and gradi-
ent density lattice, the Multi-TPMS lattices can make the
local characteristics of the structure adapt to the specific
requirements through reasonable allocation of lattice cells
Fig. 17. Deformation and failure mode. (a) Grade-P-IWP; (b) Grade-IWP; (c) Grade- with different performance attributes, which can signifi-
P; (d) Uni-IWP; (e) Uni-P.
cantly improve the structural strength and stiffness.
(2) The interface topological form significantly affects the
of the structure as fixed boundary conditions, and on the right side mechanical properties of the Multi-TPMS lattices. Reason-
there is the upward lifting force of the rotating motor. able interface form can effectively transfer the loads and
The main function of the arm is to transfer the lifting force from avoid the load concentration at the interface, which may
the propeller to the frame of the quadcopter. According to the cause catastrophic failure of the structure.
design requirements of the quadcopter [33], under the given load (3) Compared with a single configuration, the Multi-TPMS lat-
conditions, the displacement of the right side should be as small tices has different deformation and failure modes, and the
as possible. In addition, the body of the component is porous, existence of fusion interface effectively inhibits the crack
which is effective in reducing resistance to vertical passage of air. propagation.

Fig. 18. Quadcopter’s arm optimization. (a) Initial structure; (b) optimization results.

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F. Ren, C. Zhang, W. Liao et al. Materials & Design 210 (2021) 110062

Fig. 19. Model manufacture and experiment. (a) Model manufacture; (b) Experiment; (c) Load-displacement curve.

Table 2
Experimental results of quadcopter’s arm.

Type Quality/g Max load/N Max displacement /mm Stiffness/(N/mm)

Grade-P-IWP 79.8 260.8 11.1 23.5
Grade-P 78.1 231.4 11.5 20.1
Grade-IWP 79.6 171.4 10.8 15.9

Declaration of Competing Interest [10] W. Huang, D. Restrepo, J. Jung, et al., Multiscale toughening mechanisms in
biological materials and bioinspired designs, Adv. Mater. 31 (43) (2019).
[11] H. Lei, C. Li, X. Zhang, et al., Deformation behavior of heterogeneous multi-
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan- morphology lattice core hybrid structures, Addit. Manuf. (2020:) 101674.
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared [12] Y. Tang, Y.F. Zhao, A survey of the design methods for additive manufacturing
to improve functional performance, Rapid Prototyping J. 22 (3) (2016) 569–
to influence the work reported in this paper.
590.
[13] N. Jin, F. Wang, Y. Wang, et al., Failure and energy absorption characteristics
Acknowledgment of four lattice structures under dynamic loading, Mater. Des. 169 (2019)
107655.
[14] S. Ma, K. Song, J. Lan, et al., Biological and mechanical property analysis for
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of designed heterogeneous porous scaffolds based on the refined TPMS, J. Mech.
China under Grant No. 2019YFB1706900 and the Natural Science Behav. Biomed. Mater. 107 (2020) 103727.
[15] N. Yang, Z. Quan, D. Zhang, et al., Multi-morphology transition hybridization
Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China under Grant No.
CAD design of minimal surface porous structures for use in tissue engineering,
BK20202007 and National Natural Science Foundation of China Comput. Aided Des. 56 (2014) 11–21.
No. 52005261. [16] N. Yang, Y. Tian, D. Zhang, Novel real function based method to construct
heterogeneous porous scaffolds and additive manufacturing for use in medical
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