Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics-based geometric modeling of lattice structures with controllable manifold nodes

The advancement of additive manufacturing has necessitated the development of high-performance geometric modeling methods for lattice structures. A critical challenge in current additive manufacturing technologies is effectively controlling the geometric shape of nodes within lattice structures to achieve specific functional enhancements, such as strengthening mechanical properties, thereby reducing stress concentration issues. This study presents a novel geometric modeling method employing Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to smoothly control the geometric shape of nodes in lattice structures, suitable for variable-radius, heterogeneous configurations. This method is named SPH-based Lattice Geometric Modeling (SLGM). The SLGM comprises two primary steps: initially representing the geometric form around each node using a particle set, followed by the application of the SPH Particle Dynamics Model (SPDM) to control the geometric shape of each node in parallel. The method was applied to several intricate lattice structure designs, confirming its extensive broad applicability. Two optimized lattice-based beams were designed and subjected to three-point bending tests. The results showed a significant enhancement in structural load-bearing capacity for both models, with different levels of improvement, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed geometric modeling method. The modeling algorithm features high parallelism, making it suitable for generating large-scale models. This method provides effective strategies for structural optimization and efficient resource utilization in additive manufacturing, with the potential to advance the technology’s application in high-performance domains.