Investigation of Spatial Variability on Strut Diameters of Additively Manufactured Lattice Structures

Abstract

In this study, the influence of the spatial variability of geometric uncertainties on the strut members of the lattice structures fabricated by additive manufacturing is investigated. Individual struts are fabricated with various printing angles and diameters using a material extrusion process and PLA material. The diameter values of the fabricated samples are measured along the printing and radial directions at each layer under an optical microscope. Spatial correlations are characterized based on the measurements using the experimental autocorrelation function. Candidate autocorrelation functions are fitted to the measured data to identify the best fitted one for each diameter parameter and the corresponding correlation lengths are evaluated for random field. The applicability of the Karhunen-Loeve expansion (KLE) is investigated to reduce the dimensionality of the random field discretization. The results show that the diameters of the strut members at each layer are spatially dependent and the KLE method was found to give a good representation of the random field.