From Experiments to Simulations: Fatigue Performance of Strut-Based Lattice Structures
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Additive manufacturing (AM) is the key enabler for the creation of complex, material-efficient and load-sustaining components in lightweight engineering applications. Thus, by now being able to fabricate them, also the scientific interest of lattice structures increased significantly in recent years due to their favourable mechanical properties. While the quasi-static behaviour of strut-based lattices is well studied, their fatigue behaviour remains insufficiently understood. The present work addresses this issue by focusing on the finite element analysis and experimental investigation of AlSi10Mg lattice structures manufactured with the laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB) technology. Herein, two representative unit cells for the bending- and stretching-dominated deformation behaviour, bcc and f2ccz, respectively, were studied under compression-compression and tensile-compression loading in the high cycle fatigue region. Different heat-treatment procedures were applied, and the experimental results were contrasted against the as-build state revealing fundamental differences which were attributed to the residual stresses during the PBF-LB/M process. In addition to a statistical discussion of the various influences on the geometrical deviations as well as the process-induced effects, the found correlations for strut-based lattice structures were used to derive process guidelines that combine fatigue resistance with productivity considerations. The experimental results served also for the validation of the overall quality of the numerical fatigue life prediction computed by the idealized as well as the CT-informed finite element models. It has been shown that the developed FE models successfully predict fatigue behavior of AlSi10Mg lattice structures, identifying topology-dependent failure mechanisms and reproducing the experimentally observed power-law S-N relationship, with accurate trends in relative density and generally conservative fatigue strength estimates. Furthermore, the numerical computations show that the mean stress has only a minor influence under compression, leading to an R-ratio dependence fundamentally different from bulk alloys.
