Isogeometric Reaction–diffusion B-spline Level-set Method for Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Design
Please login to view abstract download link
Triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) are attractive building blocks for lightweight architected materials, yet exploring their morphology under area- or Willmore-energy objectives with explicit volume constraints remains challenging. We propose an isogeometric reaction–diffusion B-spline level-set framework for TPMS design within a unified optimization loop. The geometry is represented by a level-set field on a three-dimensional B-spline grid, enabling consistent evaluation of surface area, curvature, and volume fraction. The evolution equation follows from a curvature-regularized shape gradient of an area or Willmore functional with a volume constraint and leads to a fourth-order reaction–diffusion flow. A Lagrange-multiplier bisection scheme enforces the prescribed volume fraction, while symmetry filtering and bandwidth control restrict the design space and suppress high-frequency artifacts. A semi-implicit time discretization with a preconditioned conjugate-gradient solver yields a stable algorithm that avoids ad hoc reinitialization of the level-set field. Numerical studies on cells with Schwarz P, Schwarz D, and Schoen G symmetries reveal a two-stage evolution: rapid regularization with volume locking and curvature decay, followed by plateaus in which small residual updates may trigger transitions to lower-area configurations. The framework recovers classical TPMS families, discovers additional candidates, and provides a promising design tool for TPMS-based architected materials.
