Investigating additive manufactured lattice structures: a multi-instrument approach

Additive manufacturing (AM) is gaining relevance for the freedom it gives to designers in experimenting topologically optimized components, especially those having lattice morphology. Indeed, these are of great interest in various application fields (automotive, biomedical, etc.) because, in addition to a significant mass reduction, lattice topology (microscale) can be tuned to provide the final product (macroscale) with the specific properties it needs to exhibit. However, additive manufactured lattice structures are still to be fully investigated, given the mismatch between the designed and the manufactured final product. This article presents some preliminary results from a multi-instrument approach, grounding on non-contact measurement techniques, to characterize lattice and trabecular structures in terms of dimensional accuracy, surface morphology, stress–strain distribution, and modal behavior.