Effects of infill patterns on the strength and stiffness of 3D printed topologically optimized geometries

Purpose: Mechanical anisotropy associated with material extrusion additive manufacturing (AM) complicates the design of complex structures. This study aims to focus on investigating the effects of design choices offered by material extrusion AM – namely, the choice of infill pattern – on the structural performance and optimality of a given optimized topology. Elucidation of these effects provides evidence that using design tools that incorporate anisotropic behavior is necessary for designing truly optimal structures for manufacturing via AM. Design/methodology/approach: A benchmark topology optimization (TO) problem was solved for compliance minimization of a thick beam in three-point bending and the resulting geometry was printed using fused filament fabrication. The optimized geometry was printed using a variety of infill patterns and the strength, stiffness and failure behavior were analyzed and compared. The bending tests were accompanied by corresponding elastic finite element analyzes (FEA) in ABAQUS. The FEA used the material properties obtained during tensile and shear testing to define orthotropic composite plies and simulate individual printed layers in the physical specimens. Findings: Experiments showed that stiffness varied by as much as 22% and failure load varied by as much as 426% between structures printed with different infill patterns. The observed failure modes were also highly dependent on infill patterns with failure propagating along with printed interfaces for all infill patterns that were consistent between layers. Elastic FEA using orthotropic composite plies was found to accurately predict the stiffness of printed structures, but a simple maximum stress failure criterion was not sufficient to predict strength. Despite this, FE stress contours proved beneficial in identifying the locations of failure in printed structures. Originality/value: This study quantifies the effects of infill patterns in printed structures using a classic TO geometry. The results presented to establish a benchmark that can be used to guide the development of emerging manufacturing-oriented TO protocols that incorporate directionally-dependent, process-specific material properties.