Novel topological design of 3D Kagome structure for additive manufacturing

Purpose This paper aims to present a new topology method in designing the lightweight and complex structures for 3D printing. Design/methodology/approach Computer aided design (CAD) and topology design are the two main approaches for 3D truss lattices designing in 3D printing. Though these two ways have their own advantages and have been used by the researchers in different engineering situations, these two methods seem to be incompatible. A novel topology method is presented in this paper which can combine the merits of both CAD and topology design. It is generally based on adding materials to insufficient parts in a given structure so the resulting topology evolves toward an optimum. Findings By using the topology method, an optimized-Kagome structure is designed and both 3D original-Kagome structure and 3D optimized-Kagome structure are manufactured by FDM 3D printer with ABS and the compression tests results show that the 3D optimized-Kagome has a higher specific stiffness and strength than the origin...