Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2018, Vol. 10(3) 1–12
Ó The Author(s) 2018
Generative design method for lattice DOI: 10.1177/1687814017752482
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
structure with hollow struts of variable
wall thickness

Yedong Wang1, Shikai Jing1, Yonghui Liu2, Guohua Song1, Longfei Qie1
and Hao Xing1

Abstract
Additive manufacturing technology can make products of arbitrary shapes, greatly expanding the design space of lattice struc-
tures. Compared with traditional solid lattice structures, the lattice structures with hollow struts have higher flexural
strength, which arouses interests of designers recently. However, owing to the more complex shapes of structures, the
model generation and design are facing more challenges. In this article, a novel generative design method for the creation of
lattice structures with hollow struts is proposed. This method consists of three stages: initialization, analysis, and optimiza-
tion. First of all, a ground structure is generated automatically based on initial conditions. Then, the finite element analysis is
used to get the stress and coordinate information of finite element nodes as well as deformation information of the ground
structure. At last, a rapid optimization method is presented based on the idea of mapping the strut equivalent stress to the
strut wall thickness to optimize materials distribution. The proposed method is validated through a case study, demonstrat-
ing that this method can enhance performance of products while reducing the complexity of the optimization problem.

Keywords
Generative design, hollow struts, lattice structure, optimization, additive manufacturing

Date received: 17 April 2017; accepted: 23 November 2017

Handling Editor: David R Salgado

Introduction foaming structure.6 Generally, lattice structures have

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been defined as a
process of joining materials to make an object from
three-dimensional (3D) model data, usually layer upon
layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing meth-
odologies.1,2 The recent improvement of AM technolo-
gies have allowed designers to directly manufacture
structures of almost arbitrary shapes based on 3D digi-
tal model, which expands the design space greatly.3,4
Owing to the characteristics of good energy absorption,
strong thermal, and acoustic insulation properties, and
most importantly, a high strength to low mass correla-
tion, lattice structures have attracted wide attention of
designers among the numerous types of complex struc-
tures.5 A lattice structure with a volumetric density of
r=0.1 will be roughly three times stronger than a
better mechanical and multi-functional properties in
mesoscale.7 Thus, this article concentrates on mesoscale
lattice structures with strut diameters in the range of
0.1–10 mm and strut lengths on the order of centimeters.
The essence of lattice structure design is to optimize
the distribution of materials, that is, ‘‘put the materials
1
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing,
China
2
Haier Group Technique R&D Center, Qingdao, Shandong Province,
China
Corresponding author:
Shikai Jing, School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of
Technology, 5 South Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing
100081, China.
Email: jingshikai@bit.edu.cn

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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
in the place where they are needed.’’8 Traditionally, the
optimization of lattice structures is completed by topol-
ogy methods, mainly including the homogenization
method and ground structure method.9 Bendsøe and
Kikuchi10 proposed the homogenization method first in
1988. This method extends the concept of composite
media from the domain of porous materials to topology
optimization by means of introducing microstructure in
the macroscopic material analysis, which transforms
the complex topology optimization problem into a rela-
tively simple size optimization problem. Thus, the per-
formance of the macrostructure can be obtained from
different microstructures. The ground structure method
is development for discrete structures. It is designed to
adjust the initial ground structure, the design variables
of which are the shape and size of the cross section.11
Lattice structures are typical discrete structures, and
therefore, designers usually adopt the ground structure
method to improve its performance.
However, owing to the large number of struts in the
lattice structures, difficulties occurred during the design
process. Graf12 reported that there would be 2n kinds
of designs when the structure had n struts, with the
hypothesis that the strut diameter could only be 0 or 1.
It takes too much time to look for the optimal solution
using traditional optimization methods. In order to
reduce the computational complexity, researches tend
to take the following two kinds of solutions. The first
kind is to improve the optimization methods using
heuristic methods. Chang and Rosen13,14 proposed the
size matching and scaling method (SMS), which com-
bined a solid-body finite element analysis and a library
of pre-defined lattice configurations to generate a struc-
ture’s lattice topology. Zhang et al.15 eliminated the
need for time-consuming optimization by mapping the
cell density information from structure topology opti-
mization results to struts diameter with a weighted
average method. Obviously, the selection strategy of
different weighting factors will have a significant influ-
ence on the design results. The second kind is to opti-
mize the direction of lattice structures. The strain
energy of lattice structures in different directions was
calculated by Tang et al.,16 which showed that the
directions could dramatically affect the mechanical
properties of structures. In order to avoid the bending
and shearing loads of struts, Reinhart and Teufelhart17
reported that the optimal arrangement of the skin–
lattice structures was along the force direction.
Additionally, some researchers have made a break-
through from the structure itself recently.18 They
replaced the original solid struts with hollow struts,
which were the shape of tubes. Queheillalt and
Wadley19 designed a kind of light sandwich truss struc-
ture formed of hollow struts, the strength of which was
much larger than that of the solid truss structure.
Pingle et al.20 adopted the tubular structures of
pyramid-shaped arrangement as the sandwich plate
and found that the strength was mainly determined by
the relative density. When the relative density was
greater than 3%, the structure would not bend.
Although lattice structures with hollow struts have
better performance, the difficulties of the structures
design are also greatly increased due to their complex
shapes. In order to improve the design efficiency of lat-
tice structure, a new generative design method is pro-
posed in this article. There are two outstanding
characteristics of this method: (1) the lattice structures
can be generated automatically under the consideration
of directions, which can save much modeling time and
(2) the wall thickness of struts are variable to obtain the
optimal materials distribution by means of a mapping
method, which avoids complex topology optimization.
Basic concepts
Hollow struts
Because hollow struts have higher second area moments
than solid struts, the lattice structures constructed with
hollow struts are found to be stronger than their solid
strut counterparts.21
The shapes of the cross sections can influence the
mechanical properties of the struts. Compared to sec-
tions of other shapes, hollow struts with circular sec-
tions have higher second moment of area and better
flexural behavior.22 The hollow strut model is shown in
Figure 1. The symbol L represents the length of the
strut. The symbols R and r represent the outer radius
and inner radius, respectively. Then the wall thickness
of the strut can be expressed as
t=R  r ð1Þ
Therefore, the key to determine the wall thickness of
the strut is to determine its outer radius and inner
radius. The full representation of a hollow strut is
shown below
Strut = (SNode ID, ENode ID, R, ri , L) ð2Þ
where SNode ID and ENode ID represent the ID of
start node and end node, respectively. The definition of
Figure 1. Hollow strut model.
Wang et al. 3

Figure 2. Comparison of optimized lattice unit cell with solid struts and hollow struts: (a) solid lattice unit cell, (b) hollow lattice
unit cell, and (c) hollow lattice unit cell with two struts removed for visual display. The struts in (b) and (c) have identical outer
radius and different inner radius.

a hollow strut requires five elements, namely, the start

node, the end node, the inner radius, the outer radius,
and the length. L is defined by the designer. In order to
allocate the limited materials reasonably, the wall thick-
nesses of the struts can be variable. In the proposed
method, the struts have identical outer radius and
length; however, the inner radius of struts can be differ-
ent. As shown in Figure 2, the struts of traditional solid
lattice structures have different thicknesses and look
quite irregular, which limits its range of application and
result. The lattice structures designed in this method
remain regular on the premise of better performance.

Lattice structure and lattice frame

It is necessary to introduce the concept of lattice frame
beforehand. The lattice frame is a graphical representa-
tion model which is composed of the nodes, the line seg-
ments, and the topological relations among the nodes.
The relationship between the lattice frame and lattice
structure is shown in Figure 3. Lattice frame plays an
important role in the design of the lattice structure. The
lattice frame can be converted to the lattice structure
based on a given strut thickness list.

Ground structure
Figure 3. The relationship between: (a) a lattice frame and
Ground structure is the initial structure of the topology (b) a lattice structure.
optimization.23 In topology optimization theories, the
optimum topology is a subset of a ground structure.
The performance is optimized by adding, deleting, and difficult to generate, this article will make it in the fol-
modifying parts of the ground structure. In this article, lowing section.
the ground structure is the initial structure of identical
outer radius and inner radius which need to be further
adjusted. The cross sections of the struts become design Design method
variables of the optimization problem. The ground
structure is generated according to the given condi- The proposed design method aims at optimizing the
tions. Since hollow structure of arbitrary directions is materials distribution of lattice structures while meeting
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 4. Schematic illustration of the IAO stages during the design process of an AM lattice structure: (a) define the design space
and give the constraints, (b) the initial ground structure with hollow struts of identical wall thickness is obtained with the automatic
generation method, (c) results of finite element analysis are obtained, and (d) the explicit lattice structure is obtained from the
mapping method.

mechanical performance requirements. As illustrated in

Figure 4, it consists of three design stages: initialization,
analysis, and optimization (IAO). As previously men-
tioned, this IAO method gains efficiency by avoiding
topology optimization on explicit lattice structures. The
first design stage is called the initialization stage, where
the ground structure is generated based on the initial
conditions. Moreover, the direction of the ground
structure can be designed according to the intentions of
designers. In the second design stage, the finite element
analysis is carried out on generated ground structure.
Information including equivalent stress and coordi-
nates of nodes as well as deformation of ground struc-
ture is recorded at the same time. Last but not least, a
mapping method is used to optimize wall thickness of Figure 5. Base lattice frame and desired lattice frame.
the lattice struts, further improving performance of the
part. These three design stages will be discussed in the
following three subsections. lattice frames along the x-, y-, and z-axis are easily cal-
culated, which are regarded as base lattice frames.
Lattice frames in arbitrary directions can be obtained
Initialization through rotating from base frames. As shown in
The aim of this stage is to generate the ground structure Figure 5, the angle between the desired lattice frame
based on initial conditions. This stage can be divided and base frame is a. Actually, the base frame is gener-
into two main design steps. ated first during the 3D modeling process. And then, it
First, a lattice frame is generated based on the given is rotated to generate the desired lattice frame.
conditions including the length of struts, structure The rotation transformation between lattice frames
direction, and unit cell number in x-, y-, and z-axis is in fact the coordinate transformation between the
directions, respectively. The nodes coordinates of corresponding points. The transformation equation
Wang et al.
between graphs in the n-dimensional Euclidean space is
shown by equation (3)
V = V  T
The 3D lattice frame is generated after two rotation
steps from the base lattice frame: rotating a degrees
around the origin of in the XOY plane first, and then
rotating g degrees around some axis (the y-axis is cho-
sen in this article). The rotation matrix can be con-
cluded as
0 1 0
cos a sin a 0 cos g 0  sin g
T = @  sin a cos a 0A @ 0 1 0 A
0 0 1 sin g 0 cos g
The nodes coordinates of the lattice frame can be
obtained with the help of equation (5)
xi = zi l sin g + (xi l cos a  yi sin a) cos g
yj = xi l sin a  yi l cos a
zk = zi l cos g + (xi l cos a  yi sin a) sin g
Second, the ground structure is generated from the
lattice frame when given the outer radius and inner
radius of struts. The wall thickness of each strut is iden-
tical in the ground structure. Assuming the outer
radius, the number of struts, the target volume, and the
length of struts are R, i, V, and L, respectively; the
inner radius of struts can be obtained by
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
V
r = R2 
piL
In this way, we can get all the parameters needed for
the ground structures modeling. According to the
requirements of designers, the ground structures of any
direction can be generated automatically based on UG
NX9.0 secondary development technology. A strut
model can be obtained through Boolean operation with
two cylinders of different radius. Some lattice struc-
tures of different a and g values are shown in Figure 6.
Analysis
In the second design stage of the proposed method,
finite element analysis is carried on the ground struc-
ture. The analysis results include lots of finite element
nodes. It is necessary to distinguish the finite element
nodes from the lattice structure nodes. The full repre-
sentation of the finite element analysis nodes is shown
by equation (7)
Q = (e1 , e2 , . . . , en )
ei = (xi , yi , zi , si )
5
ð3Þ
1
ð4Þ
Figure 6. Hollow lattice structures of different directions.
where the symbol Q represents the finite element nodes
set; the symbol n represents the number of finite element
nodes; the symbols x, y, and z represent the coordinates
ð5Þ of the finite element node i; the symbol si represents the
equivalent stress of the finite element node i.
In addition, the deformation of the ground structure
under the action of outer load should also be recorded,
which is used to measure the stiffness of the structure.
Wall thickness optimization
The struts of the ground structure have the same wall
thickness, which needs to be optimized to get better per-
formance. ‘‘Optimal performance’’ means that struc-
ð6Þ tures can withstand the maximum external load in the
case of a certain volume or that structures have the min-
imum deformation in the case of a certain volume and
external load. The formulation of the proposed optimi-
zation problem for lattice structure can be approached
as a size optimization problem as well as a multiple
objective design problem. Typically, this problem is for-
mulated with the compromise decision support problem
(cDSP).24 The mathematical representation for the opti-
mization problem is expressed in Table 1.
Table 1. Mathematical cDSP formulation for the optimization
problem.
Item Parameter
Given: GS, Vt, si
Find: R, ri
Satisfy: si <smax , d<dmax
rmin <ri <R<Rmax  
Minimize: V  Vt 
min f = w1 3d + w2 3 
Vt 
ð7Þ
cDSP: compromise decision support problem.
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 7. Hollow lattice structures of different rotations.
In Table 1, the symbols GS, Vt, and si represent the
ground structure, target volume, and equivalent stress
value of strut i, respectively. The outer radius and inner
radius of strut i can range from the lower radius bound,
rmin, to the upper radius bound, Rmax. V and d are the
actual volume and deformation of the structure, respec-
tively. The symbol v1 and v2 are set manually by the
designer as the weighting variables for d and V to char-
acterize the relative importance of the volume and
deflection design goals during optimization.
In the case of a certain volume of materials, the
materials required for each strut are determined by the
size of the strut’s equivalent stress value. More materi-
als should be distributed on struts with greater stress,
which can improve the utilization ratio of materials.
Therefore, this article presents the idea of mapping the
strut equivalent stress to the strut wall thickness.
The stress distribution space can be represented by
Ps, and the wall thickness geometry can be represented
by Pt. Then, the mapping idea can be expressed in the
following form
Ps ! F ! Pt
where the symbol F represents the mapping function.
According to its stress value, the strut’s wall thickness
can be obtained based on the mapping function, as is
shown in Figure 7. The ring represents the cross section
of a strut; the points in the ring represent finite element
nodes; the size of a point represents the equivalent stress
value of the corresponding node.
The struts have the same outer radius instead of inner
radius. The strut of greater stress has the smaller inner
radius. In order to obtain exact wall thickness values,
there are two problems remaining to be solved: (1) aver-
age stress of each strut and (2) the mapping function.
The stress value of a strut is obtained by calculating
the average stress value of the finite element nodes
located on the strut. So it is necessary to judge the
position relation between the finite element nodes and
struts, which can be expressed in the following form
Given: Q = (e1 , e2 , . . . , en ), S = fS1 , S2 , . . . , Sm g
Find: Q = fQ1 , Q2 , . . . , Qm g ð9Þ
Q1 2 S1 , Q2 2 S2 , . . . , Qm 2 Sm
where the symbol Q represents the finite element nodes
set; the symbol S represents the struts set. The symbol
n represents the number of finite element nodes; the
symbol m represents the number of struts. The symbol
2 represents the meaning of ‘‘located on.’’ The prob-
lem is to find out a subset of Q that located on the cor-
responding strut according to the above information.
A strut model can be obtained through Boolean
operation with two cylinders of different radius. This
problem is equivalent to judging the position relation-
ship between the finite element nodes and the outer
cylinders of each strut, which is easier to work out. So
this problem can be further transformed into a mathe-
matical model
ð8Þ
Given : O1 (x1 , y1 , z1 ), O2 (x2 , y2 , z2 ), outr(Si ) = R
ð10Þ
Find : Qi  Q, Qi 2 Si
The centers of two end surfaces of the strut Si are O1
and O2. The symbol outr represents the outer radius of
the strut Si. The goal of the mapping method is to find
out a subset of the finite element nodes set which is
located on the strut Si at the same time.
As is shown in Figure 8, there are three kinds of posi-
tion relations between finite element nodes and struts.
The finite element node A belongs to the strut Si only
when A and Si are in the relation shown in Figure 8(c),
the mathematical expression is
dist(A, L)  R
ð11Þ
proj(A, O1 O2 ) 2 O1 O2
Wang et al. 7

Figure 8. Position relation between finite element nodes and

struts: (a) dist(A, L).R, (b) dist(A, L)<R, proj(A, O1 O2 ) 62 O1 O2 ,
and (c) dist(A, L)<R, proj(A, O1 O2 ) 2 O1 O2 .

where the symbol L represents the axis of the strut; the Figure 9. The algorithm to determine the position relationship
symbol dist(A, L) represents the distance from A to L; between finite element nodes and struts.
the symbol proj(A, O1 O2 ) represents the projection point
of A on the line segment O1 O2 .
The position relationship between finite element The outer radius is determined by the strut with the
nodes and struts is determined using an automatic maximum volume, which is regarded as a solid strut.
judgment algorithm developed by authors shown in The outer radius is the same as the radius of the solid
Figure 9. strut.
The finite element nodes on the strut Si can be Considering the precision of the 3D printer and
expressed as fA1 , A2 , . . . , Ak g, where k is the number of computer-aided design (CAD) software, the wall thick-
nodes. The equivalent stress for each node can be ness and the inner radius of struts shall not be too
expressed as fseqv(A1 ), seqv(A2 ), . . . , seqv(Ak )g. Then, small. The range of these parameters in this article is as
an average stress value of the strut Si can be obtained follows

P
k
0:1 mm  r  (R  d) mm
seqv(Ai ) ð14Þ
i=1 d = 0:05 mm
s(S i ) = ð12Þ
k
where the symbol d represents the minimum wall thick-
The outer radius and inner radius of the strut can be ness. This may lead to the change of the total volume
obtained based on the mapping formula of the required materials. Empirical studies show that
the change is generally less than 0.1%, which can be
s(Si )
V (Si ) = P
m Vt negligible.
s(Si )
j=1
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Vmax ð13Þ
R= Case study
pL
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
V (Si ) In this section, a design optimization case for a 3D can-
r(Si ) = R2  tilever beam, shown in Figure 10, is given to validate
pL
the proposed design method of lattice structures with
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 10. The 3D cantilever beam example.
hollow struts. The beam is fixed at one end with a verti-
cal 100-N load applied on the beam tip. The goal of the
design is to have as small a deflection as possible while
maintaining a volume of 1600 mm3 . The related para-
meters are shown in Table 2.
Based on the generating method discussed earlier, a
ground structure is determined after the initial design
stage, as is shown in Figure 11.
The mechanical properties of the ground structure
are analyzed using ANSYS Workbench 15.0. The
results of finite element nodes distribution and
the structure deformation are shown in Figure 12. The
geometric and performance parameters are given in
Table 3.
Based on the generated ground structure and finite
element analysis results, the outer radius and inner
radius can be obtained through the mapping method.
The position relationship between finite element nodes
and struts is determined using the algorithm in
Figure 11. Ground structure model: (a) axonometric drawing and (b) sectional drawing.
Table 2. Initial properties for the 3D cantilever beam.
Parameter Value
Length (mm) 10
Load (N) 100
Elastic modulus (N/mm) 2 3 1011
Target volume (mm3) 1600
Unit cells along length 5
Unit cells along width 1
Unit cells along height 2
3D cantilever beam: three-dimensional cantilever beam.
Figure 9. The maximum strut volume is 73.18 mm, and
this strut is regarded as a solid strut. Theoretically, the
outer radius is 1.525 mm. Considering the minimum
wall thickness d, the outer radius is set at 1.575 mm.
The inner radius distribution after optimization is
shown in Figure 13. Actually, most of the struts bear a
small stress. Thus, the wall thickness of most struts is
less than 0.2 mm. The struts of high stress have greater
wall thickness, four of which are even more than
1.1 mm. This proves that the IAO method can effec-
tively regulate the wall thickness of the hollow struts
and achieve the goal of ‘‘distributing materials accord-
ing to needs.’’
Based on the outer radius, the inner radius list, and
the generating method in the first stage, the optimal lat-
tice structure is generated. As is shown in Figure 14,
more materials are distributed on the struts close to the
fixed end of the structure. On the contrary, the wall
thickness of the struts close to the beam tip is rather
small. The results can tally well with the finite element
analysis model and the actual stress distribution of the
3D beam cantilever.
The performance comparison of the solid lattice
structure, the ground structure with hollow struts of the
same wall thickness, and the optimal lattice structure
Wang et al. 9

Figure 12. Finite element analysis: (a) finite element nodes distribution and (b) structure deformation analysis.

Table 3. Values of parameters of the ground structure.

Outer Inner Actual Relative Deformation

radius radius volume density (mm)
(mm) (mm) (mm3)

1 0.5 1600 0.1166 1.5405

with hollow struts of variable wall thickness is shown in

Figure 15. The strength of lattice structures is deter-
mined by the relative density rv 25

r
rv = ð15Þ
rs

where r is the density of the structure, and rs is the

density of the materials for manufacturing the struc-
ture. In general, the relative density of the lattice struc-
ture is not greater than 0.3%. Obviously, if the space
occupied by a structure remains unchanged, the smaller
the relative density is, the lesser materials the structure
Figure 13. The inner radius distribution of struts.
need. Deformation is also used to measure the strength
of the structure. When subjected to external forces, the
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 14. Optimized lattice structure.

Figure 15. Comparison of relative density and deformation.

structures with smaller deformation have higher

strength. Compared with the solid structure, both the
relative density and deformation of the ground struc-
ture are reduced, which proves that lattice structures
with hollow struts have better mechanical properties.
Likewise, compared with the ground structure, the rela-
tive density of the optimal structure is reduced by
10.37%, and the deformation is reduced by 46.21%.
After optimized with the mapping method, the strength
of the lattice structure is enhanced obviously.
In order to explore the effect of directions on perfor-
mance, lattice structures with multiple directions are
automatically generated using the proposed method.
The angle between the structures and the XOY plane
Figure 16. Deformation of structures in different directions.
are 0°, 5°, 10°, 15°, 20°, 25°, 30°, 35°, 40°, 45°, 50°, 55°,
60°, 65°, 70°, 75°, 80°, 85°, and 90°, respectively. The
angle between the external force and vertical direction cells in the 45° direction to study the change in defor-
is 45°. The deformation of the lattice structures in dif- mation. The results are shown in Table 4. The 3D can-
ferent directions is shown in Figure 16. It can be seen tilever beam’s deformation is influenced by the number
that the strengths of structures vary widely. When the of unit cells. The beam has the minimum deformation
external force is loaded along the diagonal direction of when the numbers of unit cells are 6, 1, and 3, respec-
the cantilever beam, the beam has the minimum tively. The reason for this phenomenon is that an aver-
deformation. age stress of each strut is used to make the wall
The number of unit cells can also have an effect on thickness optimization. If a strut is long and the stress
the cantilever performance. We adjust the number of gradient is great, parts of the strut bearing much force
Wang et al. 11

Table 4. The effects of changes of the cell number on Funding

deformation. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
Unit cells Unit cells Unit cells Deformation
along length along width along height (mm) this article: This research was supported by National Hi-
tech Research and Development program of China
2 1 2 0.413 (2015BAF04B02).
3 1 2 0.359
4 1 2 0.283
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