Optimal design, analysis and additive manufacturing for two-level stochastic honeycomb structure

Recent advances in the aviation, aerospace, and energy industries have created a huge demand for multifunctional structures with lightweight, load-carrying capacity, and heat resistance. In order to further explore the potential of honeycomb structure, a design method for hierarchically architected structures constructed by replacing side walls of pores with Voronoi lattices is put forward. A digital representation model of hierarchical honeycomb structures is first proposed. Then based on centroidal Voronoi tessellation (CVT) algorithm, the first level honeycomb structures are generated by decomposition of design domain as a set of Voronoi unit. At last, based on modified bidirectional evolutionary structural optimization and combined with the control function of the CVT algorithm, the internal pore size and distribution of cell walls are controlled to optimize the distribution of materials. The proposed approach is verified through three case studies, which provides an important basis for the wide application of additive manufacturing technology of the two-level stochastic honeycomb structure.