Additive manufacturing of novel porous structures

Porous structures made of foams, lattices, and honeycombs are gaining traction in various industrial sectors, and are featured with light weight, high specific stiffness, good energy absorption, and novel thermal, electrical, biological, acoustic characteristics. They give unique flexibility in performance-tailoring and possess great potential in the multi-functional applications across structural, mechanical, material, biomedical, and aerospace engineering. Highlighted by non-uniform cellular geometries, functionally graded porous structures are an important extension of the existing porous structural forms and potentially provide enhanced properties.

This study is to explore the possibility of using additive manufacturing (AM) devices at UNSW to produce such kind of novel porous structural specimens. 3D CAD models with diverse cellular features will be built to be fed into AM systems. Suitable specimen dimensions, details, and material types will be investigated. Expected outcomes include the successful printing of porous specimens.