Page 52 - MSAM-1-3

Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Characterization of triply periodic minimal

surface structures obtained using
toolpath-based construction design

1
1
Shujie Tan , Xi Zhang , Ziyu Wang , Liping Ding , Wenliang Chen ,
1
1
1
Yicha Zhang *
2
1 College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Nanjing, P. R. China
2 ICB-COMM, UMR 6303, CNRS, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, UTBM, Belfort, France

Abstract
Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) cellular structures of Ti6Al4V with
theoretically calculated relative densities ranging from 4% to 22.6% were designed
using a toolpath-based construction method and fabricated by laser powder bed
fusion, and their macrostructure, microstructure, and compression performance
were investigated. The results indicated that the macrostructure was the same
as that of TPMS structures designed using the traditional method. In contrast, the
microstructures of the as-built samples and the samples after stress-relief annealing
were slightly different from those of the traditional ones. Moreover, compression
test results of the Schwarz-P structures showed that the compressive modulus was
positively related to the calculated relative density, and a Gibson-Ashby model was
*Corresponding author: established to quantitatively describe the relationship between the compressive
Yicha Zhang modulus and theoretical relative density. The findings of this work show that the
(yicha.zhang@utbm.fr) mechanical performance of a TPMS structure obtained using a toolpath-based
Citation: Tan S, Zhang X, Wang Z, construction design can be accurately predicted using geometric parameters or
et al., 2022, Characterization of triply printing toolpaths. This will be helpful during the design stage.
periodic minimal surface structures
obtained using toolpath-based
construction design. Mater Sci Add Keywords: Additive manufacturing; Compression test; Laser powder bed fusion;
Manuf. 1(3): 17.
https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i3.17 Toolpath-based construction design; Triply periodic minimal surface structure
Received: July 31, 2022
Accepted: September 5, 2022
Published Online: September 21, 2022 1. Introduction
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). At present, additive manufacturing (AM), especially the powder bed fusion (PBF)
This is an Open Access article process, plays an important role in the biomedical, aerospace, automotive, and heat
distributed under the terms of the exchanger manufacturing industries [1-3] . Due to its ability to fabricate freeform surfaces,
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution, AM greatly expands design freedom. In industry, an increasing number of components
and reproduction in any medium, with extremely complex shapes, such as lattices, Voronoi foam, triply periodic minimal
provided the original work is surfaces (TPMSs), and topological shapes, have been designed, fabricated, and applied [4,5]
properly cited.
because of their excellent physical and mechanical properties. Researchers have also
Publisher’s Note: Whoice focused on the design methods [6,7] , manufacturing evaluation [8,9] , and performance [10,11]
Publishing remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in of these structures with complex shapes. However, according to the literature and our
published maps and institutional own studies, there are at least three unsolved problems in the manufacturing chain when
affiliations.

Volume 1 Issue 3 (2022) 1 http://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i3.17