EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF 3D PRINTED BÉZIER-BASED LATTICE BEAMS

Architected materials are widely used in additive manufacturing to reduce weight. The controlled arrangement of material allows to tailor their mechanical properties by tuning their geometrical parameters. A parametrization based on cubic Bézier curves is employed here to generate lattice beams by changing the position of a free control point. Two topologies with the same volume fraction and base curve for the lattice constituent elements at different positions are studied and compared. Lattice beams are manufactured via Fused Filament Fabrication of polylactic acid. The effective stiffness and yield stress of these lattice beams is analyzed experimentally using three-point bending tests. Adjusting the control point location leads to tailoring the effective mechanical properties of the lattice beams. This methodology leads to the synthesis of architected topologies with customized mechanical properties.