Multiscale Evaluation of The Elastic Behavior for The Metal-Coated Lattice Structures

Abstract Well-developed Additive Manufacturing leads to a variety of material and structure design. With the combination of 3D printing and plating technique, metal-coated resin lattice is investigated to achieve a light weight design with minimal economic cost and admirable material properties. In this paper, numerical approaches integrated with classical homogenization theory is adopted to study the effective mechanical characterizations of the BCC (Body-Centered-Cubic) metal-coated lattices. The selection of RVE (Representative Volume Element) is discussed for obtaining objective effective properties. Moreover, the impact of unit cell rod diameter and coating film thickness are investigated. A sensitivity analysis of these two parameters is conducted based on the advanced hypercube sampling methods. The results reveal that multiple-unit-cells lead to more stable homogenized properties than single unit cell. The Increase of volume fraction may improve the elastic modulus and specific modulus remarkably. However, the increase of thickness of coating film only leads to monotonously increased elastic modulus. For this reason, there exists an optimal coating film thickness for the specific modulus of the lattice structure.