Composite IsoTruss™ structures incorporate intersecting longitudinal and helical members. At the intersections, the fiber tows can be interwoven to achieve mechanical interlocking for increased joint integrity. Interlocking introduces gaps and curvilinear fiber paths similar to the crossovers in filament-wound structures, potentially facilitating local delamination within the members, thus reducing the strength and/or damage tolerance of the structure. Optimizing the interlocking pattern at the joints along with efficient consolidation minimizes these effects. Joint specimens were fabricated using a specially designed machine. Specific tow intersection patterns at the joint were: 1) Completely encapsulating the longitudinal member with the tows of the helical member; and 2) Interweaving the tows of the helical member with the tows of the longitudinal member. Consolidation was accomplished using: 1) a braided sleeve; 2) a coiled sleeve; 3) a sparse spiral Kevlar® wrap; 4) a polyester shrink tape sleeve; 5) twisting the entire bundle of longitudinal fiber tows; and 6) cinching the joints using aramid fiber. Ultimate compression strength and stiffness is directly related to the straightness of the tows in the longitudinal members at the intersections. An encapsulated joint reduces member strength by only 4.6%; whereas, an interwoven joint reduces member strength by 30.5%. The fiber paths of the longitudinal member in encapsulated joints are straighter than in interwoven joints, resulting in an average strength difference of 26.2%. Physical properties, strength, and stiffness show that consolidation quality directly affects performance. Consolidation using sleeves provides high quality consolidation, high strength, and high stiffness. Encapsulated joints consolidated using sleeves have an average ultimate strength and Young's modulus 34% and 21% higher, respectively, than encapsulated joints consolidated using other methods. Interwoven joints consolidated using sleeves have an average ultimate strength and Young's modulus 28% and 19% higher, respectively, than interwoven joints consolidated using other methods. Consolidating specimens using a braided sleeve yields the highest quality based on consistency, strength, and stiffness. Consolidating specimens by twisting the longitudinal member yields the lowest strength and stiffness. These conclusions will be applied to IsoTrussâ„¢ grid structure design and manufacturing technology.

Topology-based optimization techniques and lattice structures are powerful ways to accomplish lightweight components with enhanced mechanical performance. Recent developments in additive manufacturing (AM) have led the way to extraordinary opportunities in realizing complex designs that are derived from topology and lattice-based structural optimization. The main aim of this work is to give a contribution, in the integration between structural optimization techniques and AM, by proposing a setup of a proper methodology for rapid development of optimized medical implants addressing oseeointegration and minimization of stress shielding related problems. The validity of the proposed methodology for a proof of concept was demonstrated in two real-world case studies: a tibia intramedullary implant and a shoulder hemi prosthetics for two bone cancer patients. The optimization was achieved using topology optimization and replacement of solid volumes by lattice structures. Samples of three lattice unit cell configurations were designed, fabricated, mechanically tested, and compared to select the most proper configuration for the shoulder hemi prosthesis. Weight reductions of 30% and 15% were achieved from the optimization of the initial design of the tibia intramedullary implant and the shoulder hemiprosthesis respectively compared to initial designs. Prototypes were fabricated using selective laser melting (SLM) and direct light processing (DLP) technologies. Validation analysis was performed using finite element analysis and compressive mechanical testing. Future work recommendations are provided for further development and improvement of the work presented in this thesis.

Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies in particular powder bed fusion processes such as Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) are capable of producing a fully-dense metal components directly from computer-aided design (CAD) model without the need of tooling. This unique capability offered by metal AM has allowed the manufacture of inter-connected lattice structures from metallic materials for different applications including, medical implants and aerospace lightweight components. Despite the many promising design freedoms, metal AM still faces some major technical and design barriers in building complex structures with overhang geometries. Any overhang geometry which exceeds the minimum allowable build angle must be supported. The function of support structure is to prevent the newly melted layer from curling due to thermal stresses by anchoring it in place. External support structures are usually removed from the part after the build; however, internal support structures are difficult or impossible to remove. These limitations are in contrast to what is perceived by designers as metal AM being able to generate all conceivable geometries. Because support structures consume expensive raw materials, use a considerable amount of laser consolidation energy, there is considerable interest in design optimisation of support structure to minimize the build time, energy, and material consumption. Similarly there is growing demand of developing more advanced and lightweight cellular structures which are self-supporting and manufacturable in wider range of cell sizes and volume fractions using metal AM. The main focuses of this research is to tackle the process limitation in metal AM and promote design freedom through advanced self-supporting and low-density Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) cellular structures. Low density uniform, and graded, cellular structures have been developed for metal AM processes. This work presents comprehensive experimental test conducted in SLM and DMLS processes using different TPMS cell topologies and materials. This research has contributed to new knowledge in understanding the manufacturability and mechanical behaviour of TPMS cellular structures with varying cell sizes, orientations and volume fractions. The new support structure method will address the saving of material (via low volume cellular structures and easy removal of powder) and saving of energy (via reduced build-time).

Le récent développement de la Fabrication Additive de pièces métalliques permet d'élaborer directement des structures à partir de modèles 3D. En particulier, la technologie "Electron Beam Melting" (EBM) permet la fusion sélective, couche par couche, de poudres métalliques. Elle autorise la réalisation de géométries très complexes mais apporte de nouvelles contraintes de fabrication.Ce travail se concentre sur la caractérisation géométrique et mécanique de structures treillis produites par cette méthode. Les pièces fabriquées sont comparées au design initial à travers des caractérisations par tomographie aux rayons X. Les propriétés mécaniques sont testées en compression uni-axiale. Pour les poutres de faibles épaisseur, la différence entre la structure numérique et celle fabriquée devient significative. Les écarts au design initial se traduisent pour chaque poutre par un concept de matière mécaniquement efficace. D'un point de vue modélisation, ce concept est pris en compte en remplaçant la poutre fabriquée par un cylindre avec un diamètre mécaniquement équivalent. Ce diamètre équivalent est utilisé dans des simulations et optimisations "réalistes" intégrant ainsi les contraintes de fabrication de la technologie EBM.Différentes stratégies sont aussi proposées pour réduire la proportion de volume "inefficace" et améliorer le contrôle de la taille des poutres, soit en jouant sur les paramètres procédé et les stratégies de fusion, soit en effectuant des post-traitements. / The recent development of Additive Manufacturing for the fabrication of metallic parts allows structures to be directly manufactured from 3D models. In particular, the "Electron Beam Melting" (EBM) technology is a suitable process which selectively melts a powder bed layer by layer. It can build very complex geometries but brings new limitations that have to be quantified.This work focuses on the structural and mechanical characterization of lattice structures produced by such technology. The structural characterization mainly rely on X-ray tomography whereas mechanical properties are assessed by uni-axial compression. The geometry and related properties of the fabricated structures are compared with the designed ones. For small strut size, the difference between the designed structure and the produced one is large enough to impact the desired mechanical properties. The concept of mechanical efficient volume is introduced. For the purpose of simulation, this concept is taken into account by replacing the struts by a cylinder with a textit{mechanical equivalent diameter}. After validation, it has been used into "realistic" simulation and optimization procedures, thus taking into account the process constraints.Post-treatments (Chemical Etching and Electro-Chemical Polishing) were applied on lattice structures to get rid of the inefficient matter by decreasing the surface roughness. The control of the size of the fabricated struts was improved by tuning the process strategies and parameters.

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Hydrodynamic drag testing was conducted for eleven different configurations of IsoTruss® lattice structures. Flow visualization of prototypical IsoTruss® wind towers was also performed using Particle Image Velocimetry instrumentation. The drag test and flow visualization specimens included 6-node and 8-node configurations, single and double-grid geometries, thick and thin member sizes, smooth and rough surface finishes, a helical-only structure, and a smaller outer diameter test specimen. Three sets of hydrodynamic drag tests were conducted in a closed-circuit water tunnel: 1) orientation drag tests, 2) water velocity drag tests, and 3) height variation drag tests. The orientation drag tests measured the hydrodynamic drag force of the IsoTruss® test specimens at five different orientations with an average water velocity of 1.43 mph (0.64 m/s). The water velocity drag tests measured the maximum drag for each IsoTruss® test specimen at water velocities ranging from 0.0 to an average 1.43 mph (0.64 m/s). Based on the average outer structure diameter of the IsoTruss® specimens, the water velocities corresponded to a Reynolds number range of 7,000 to 80,000. Based on the average member diameter, the corresponding Reynolds number spanned from 600 to 3,000. In addition, the height variation drag tests were performed by vertically extracting the IsoTruss® test specimens from the test section at four different immersed height levels, with a maximum immersed height of 7.22 in (18.1 cm). The height variation testing corresponded to a Froude number range of 0.40 to 0.90. The IsoTruss® specimens exhibited an average lower drag coefficient based on the projected cylindrical area than the smooth circular cylinder data throughout the Reynolds number and Froude number ranges. The drag coefficient based on solid member area showed no correlation when shown as a function of the solidity ratio. However, for the drag coefficient calculated from the solid member projected area, the data for all IsoTruss® test specimens collapsed to a 2nd order polynomial when presented as a function of the Froude number, with an R2 of 0.99. Conversely, no significant relationship was shown when the drag coefficient based on projected cylindrical area was plotted versus the Froude number. The hydrodynamic data was compared to aerodynamic data, and the orientation testing results were identical. The hydrodynamic data differed by an average of 17% compared to the non-dimensional aerodynamic results. The flow visualization research revealed that the velocity returned to 2% of the freestream velocity at 1.24 diameters upstream from the prototypical IsoTruss® wind tower. Likewise, the velocity returned to a maximum 4% of the freestream velocity at 0.94 diameters sidestream of the model IsoTruss® wind tower.

<p>Composite materials have been invented and used to make all kinds of industrial products, such as automobiles, aircraft, sports equipment etc., for many years. Excellent properties such as high specific stiffness and strength have been recognized and studied for decades, motivating the use of composite materials. However, the design of composite structures still remains a challenge. Existing design tools are not adequate to exploit the full benefits of composites. Many tools are still based on the traditional material selection paradigm created for isotropic homogeneous materials, separated from the shape design. This will lose the coupling effects between composite materials and the geometry and lead to less optimum design of the structure. Hence, due to heterogeneity and anisotropy inherent in composites, it is necessary to model composite parts with appropriate microstructures  instead of simplistically replacing composites as black aluminum and consider materials and geometry at the same time.</p> <p><br></p> <p>This work mainly focuses on the design problems of complex material-structural systems through computational analyses. Complex material-structural systems are structures made of materials that have microstructures smaller than the overall structural dimension but still obeying the continuum assumption, such as fiber reinforced laminates, sandwich structures, and meta-materials, to name a few. This work aims to propose a new design-by-analysis framework based on the mechanics of structure genome (MSG), because of its capability in accurate and efficient predictions of effective properties  for different solid/structural models and three-dimensional local fields (stresses, strains, failure status, etc). The main task is to implement the proposed framework by developing new tools and integrating these tools into a complete design toolkit. The main contribution of this work is a new efficient high-fidelity design-by-analysis framework for complex material-structural systems.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The proposed design framework contains the following components. 1) MSG and its companion code SwiftComp is the theoretical foundation for structural analysis in this design framework. This is used to model the complex details of the composite structures. This approach provides engineers the flexibility to use different multiscale modeling strategies. 2) Structure Gene (SG) builder creates finite element-based model inputs for SwiftComp using design parameters defining the structure. This helps designers deal with realistic and meaningful engineering parameters directly without expert knowledge of finite element analysis. 3) Interface is developed using Python for easy access to needed data such as structural properties and failure status. This is used as the integrator linking all components and/or other tools outside this framework. 4) Design optimization methods and iteration controller are used for conducting the actual design studies such as parametric study, optimization, surrogate modeling, and uncertainty quantification. This is achieved by integrating Dakota into this framework. 5) Structural analysis tool is used for  computing global structural responses. This is used if an integrated MSG-based global analysis process is needed.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Several realistic design problems of composite structures are used to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework. Parameter study of a simple fiber reinforce laminated structure is carried out for investigating the following: comparing with traditional design-by-analysis approaches, whether the new approach can bring new understandings on parameter-response relations and because of new parameterization methods and more accurate analysis results. A realistic helicopter rotor blade is used to demonstrate the optimization capability of this framework. The geometry and material of composite rotor blades are optimized to reach desired structural performance. The rotor blade is also used to show the capability of strength-based design using surrogate models of sectional failure criteria. A thin-walled composite shell structure is used to demonstrate the capability of designing variable stiffness structures by steering in-plane orientations of fibers of the laminate. Finally, the tool is used to study and design auxetic laminated composite materials which have negative Poisson's ratios.</p>

La problématique initiale part du constat que les échecs d’implants sont souvent causés par une inadéquation entre les propriétés élastiques de l’os et celles de l’implant. Aujourd’hui, ce problème de biocompatibilité mécanique suscite un intérêt croissant et a conduit au développement d’alliages de titane β-métastables qui possèdent un module d’élasticité faible, moitié moindre que celui de l’alliage Ti-6Al-4V classiquement utilisé dans les applications d’implantologie. De plus, les structures architecturées ou treillis font, elles aussi, l’objet d’intenses recherches dans le but de réduire le module d’élasticité et de maximiser la résistance. Leur mise en forme, avec une maîtrise précise de l’architecture, est possible grâce à la fabrication additive et les nombreuses possibilités qu’elle offre : liberté de design, gain matière, pièces complexes, customisation de masse... Ce travail de thèse porte sur la mise en œuvre de l’alliage de titane à bas module d’élasticité Ti-26Nb(%at.) par la technologie de fusion laser sur lit de poudres. Une stratégie d’élaboration in situ de ces alliages à partir de poudres élémentaires de Ti et de Nb est explorée, à la fois pour permettre d’éventuels ajustements de composition, et pour pallier au manque de disponibilité des alliages de titane sous forme de poudres. La démarche est réalisée avec deux morphologies de poudre, irrégulière et sphérique. Les effets des nombreux paramètres de ce procédé (puissance du laser, vitesse et stratégie de balayage...) sur l’homogénéité et la porosité des pièces élaborées sont quantifiés. Un alliage homogène peut être obtenu sous réserve de l’utilisation d’une densité d’énergie adaptée et d’une granulométrie de poudre tenant compte des températures de fusion respectives des éléments. La caractérisation de la microstructure met en évidence une texture marquée, dépendante de la stratégie de balayage. Les pièces élaborées présentent un bas module d’élasticité associé à une résistance mécanique élevée, avec une déformation élastique favorable par rapport à un alliage de référence coulé. Par ailleurs, un algorithme d’optimisation est développé et permet de contrôler les propriétés mécaniques d’une structure architecturée à partir de ses paramètres géométriques (rayon, longueur et orientation des poutres). La combinaison de cet alliage de titane à bas module d’élasticité et d’une structure architecturée développée à partir ce cet algorithme a été appliqué à une prothèse totale de hanche, qui a fait l’objet de simulations par éléments finis. L’évaluation du phénomène de stress-shielding montre que, comparativement à un modèle massif plus rigide, ce type de prothèse permet de réduire de façon significative la déviation des contraintes. En se rapprochant du modèle dit physiologique, cette prothèse peut être qualifiée de « biomimétique » sur le plan du comportement mécanique / The initial problematic arises from the fact that implant failure is often caused by a mismatch between the elastic properties of the bone and those of the implant. Nowadays, an increasing interest is given to this mechanical biocompatibility and led to the development of β-metastable titanium alloys that possess low Young’s modulus, about half that of the conventionally used Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Moreover, lattice structures are currently being the subject of many investigations with the aim of achieving low Young’s modulus and high strength. Their fabrication, with accurate control over the architecture, is made possible thanks to additive manufacturing processes and the several possibilities they offer: design freedom, reduced material usage rate, complex shapes, mass customisation... The present work focuses on the implementation of low modulus titanium alloy Ti-26Nb(at.%) by the means of selective laser melting. An in situ elaboration strategy, based on a mixture of elemental powders, is explored in order to allow potential composition adjustments and to overcome the unavailability of titanium alloy powders. The approach is carried out using two distinct powder morphologies, spherical and irregular. The effects of the numerous parameters of the process (laser power, speed, scanning strategy...) on homogeneity and porosity of the manufactured parts is quantified. A homogeneous alloy can be obtained subject to the use of suitable energy density levels and powder size distributions that take into account the respective fusion temperatures of both elements. Microstructure characterisation highlights a pronounced texture resulting from the scanning strategy. The elaborated samples display a low Young’s modulus associated with a high strength, and hence a favourable strength to elastic modulus ratio compared to the reference cast alloy. Furthermore, an optimization algorithm is developed and allows controlling the mechanical properties of a lattice structure with its geometrical parameters (radius, length and orientation of struts). The combined use of this low Young’s modulus titanium alloy with a lattice structure developed through this algorithm was applied to the design of a total hip prosthesis that was subjected to finite element simulations. Stress-shielding evaluation shows that, compared to a solid design, this kind of prosthesis permits to reduce stress-shielding significantly. By getting closer to a physiological model, this prosthesis can be qualified as “biomimetic” in terms of mechanical behaviour