Estimation of Mechanical Properties

of Micro-Lattice Panel with Irregular Cells

Kuniharu Ushijima and Dai-Heng Chen

Abstract In our study, the uniaxial tensile response of lattice panel with missing
cell region was investigated using nonlinear FE analysis. In particular, the effects
of missing cell size and shape on the initial stiffness E and the plastic collapse
strength pl were discussed. The initial stiffness is mainly affected by the ratio of
missing cell height h=h0 as well as the missing cell width w=w0 , and independent
of the unit-cell shape. On the other hand, the plastic collapse strength is mainly
dominated by the missing cell width w=w0 only, which implies that the strength is
affected strongly by the tensile strength at the front of the missing cell region.

1 Introduction

Over the decades, cellular structures, such as honeycombs, foams and lattice
structures, have been taken much attention, and used for many kinds of structural
applications owing to their superior mechanical performance per unit mass. Up
to now, many technical papers regarding the mechanical properties of cellular
structures have been published [1–8]. In most cases, the cellular structures are
composed of uniform cell wall and periodic structural arrangement. On the contrary,
Guo and Gibson [1] have investigated the effect of structural non-uniformities in the
cellular structures on the compressive response by using FE analysis. Also, Silva and
Gibson [2] have studied the effect of randomly removing cell edges in hexagonal
honeycombs on the Young’s modulus and collapse stresses.

K. Ushijima ()
Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: kuniharu@rs.tus.ac.jp
D.-H. Chen
Faculty of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Jiangsu University, Jiangsu, China
e-mail: dhchen@ujs.edu.cn

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 33

H. Irschik et al. (eds.), Dynamics and Control of Advanced Structures
and Machines, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43080-5_4
34 K. Ushijima and D.-H. Chen

In our study, the uniaxial tensile response of lattice panel with missing cell region
is investigated using nonlinear FE analysis. In particular, the effects of missing cell
size and shape on the initial stiffness and the plastic collapse strength are discussed.

2 Method of Numerical Analysis

In our numerical calculation, the commercial FE software, MSC.Marc 2012, is used

to demonstrate the elastoplastic behaviour of the micro-lattice panel. Figure 1a
shows the schematic of numerical model in our FE analysis. The model which
consists of 3-D unit cell (length Lx , Ly and Lz in x-, y- and z-directions) as shown in
Fig. 1b has a missing cell region at the centre, and is subjected to a uniaxial in-plane
tensile load. Each unit cell is composed of eight slender beams (length L, diameter
d D 200 [m]) connected to each other. In our FE analysis, Timoshenko beam
element is selected, and each beam is divided into 20 number of elements. Each
beam is assumed to be isotropic and homogeneous elastoplastic material. Here, the
Young’s modulus Es , Poisson’s ratio s and yield stress pls are set to 140 [GPa],
0.3 and 144 [MPa], respectively, which are all based on the experimental data of
stainless steel SS316L. Also, owing to symmetry of the panel, only one quarter
region is modelled in our calculation. The geometrical parameters of our numerical
model are shown in Fig. 1c. Here, Nx and Ny represent the number of unit cell in
x- and y-direction, respectively. Parameters nx and ny show the number of missing
cell in x- and y-direction, respectively. Moreover, w0 and w are the widths of overall

Lz=2.9mm
h0 =Ny L y

Ly
missing cell region y
h = nyL y

Lx
w=nxLx
w0 =Nx L x
z x y
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1 Schematic of numerical model in FE analysis. (a) Overall model; (b) Unit cell; (c) FE
model