Generative design method of honeycomb structure for additive manufacturing

To solve the problem of honeycomb structure design and modeling in additive manufacturing, a generative design method of honeycomb structure was proposed through imitating the natural honeycomb construction process. By researching the inner mechanism of bees' hexagon nest, the honeycomb structure generative modeling was divided into two main processes: the generation of honeycomb structure planar main line and the construction of honeycomb panel. On the one hand, the honeycomb structure variation principle of “from the curve to the straight” was analyzed. According to the tangent relationship existed in the process of evolution, the method of generating the uniform honeycomb planar main lines was introduced, and the improved algorithm was used to realize the design of non-uniform honeycomb structure planar main lines. On the other hand, the method to form honeycomb panel with equal thickness was constructed by imitating the honeycomb beeswax accumulation, which provided a new way to model the uniform and non-uniform honeycomb structure. The feasibility of proposed natural-inspired honeycomb structure generation design method was verified by the general software.