Impact of Geometry on the Thermal and Mechanical Properties of Periodic Surface Structures: A Numerical Study

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, Czestochowa University of Technology, Dąbrowskiego 69, 42-201 Częstochowa, Poland

Abstract

Periodic Surface Structures (PSS) fabricated via Additive Manufacturing (AM) have recently emerged as being appropriate candidates for high-value engineered structures. Among the many PSS designs, gyroid structures have demonstrated merits in mechanical properties and permeability compared to traditional lattice structures. Periodic surface structures are mathematically formulated by geometric factors: surface thickness, sample size, number of surface periods, or unit cells. These elements produce a continuous sur-face with specific topology. Numerical simulations of the effect of modulating these factors on overall thermal and mechanical properties require substantial computational resources and give a quite good qualitative assessment. Cubic P-surface (“Primitive”), D-surface (“Diamond”), and gyroid surface structures of various designs were simulated under load and heat transport using a numerical approach. The influence of geometric factors on thermal and mechanical behavior was determined qualitatively. The results show the impact of the number of cells and surface thickness on both thermal and strength modulus. The paper focuses on thermal and mechanical analysis of periodic surface structures. The study is conducted by solving the stress and heat equations using the Finite Element Method (FEM) and is achieved with the use of our authorial software. Our software module generates periodic surface structures and simulates stress and temperature distribution in it. The stress model is defined by dependence between stress and strain, it got from an experiment, and the correlation of strain and displacement got from geometric conditions. In the paper, we present calculations for three-dimensional systems in which we analyze the stress and temperature distribution depending on the geometric factors. The results presented allow estimation of the behavior of periodic surface structures under loads. It intends to evaluate the possibility of crack occurrence in complex structures based on the performed numerical simulations in future work.