Design and simulation of an innovative cylinder fabricated by selective laser melting

Additive Manufacturing (AM) processing has attracted wide attention due to its advantages, e.g., rapid prototyping and free design. In aeronautic and astronautic engineering, it is especially attractive to apply AM processing, especially Selective Laser Melting (SLM), into primary structures that always occupy most of the whole mass of aircraft or spacecraft. In this paper, an innovative lattice sandwich structure that is suitable to be manufactured with SLM is adopted to design the typical cylinder under axial compression. Firstly, the mechanical properties of pyramidal lattice are investigated, and the bearing capacity of the lattice sandwich cylinder is given analytically for each failure mode. Secondly, a composite cylinder is re-designed in the form of lattice sandwich structure, which sizes are ultimately obtained through optimization. Finally, finite element model of the innovative cylinder is established and several kinds of imperfection are introduced to simulate the defects caused by SLM. Numerical result shows that the lattice sandwich design can obviously enhance the bearing capacity of cylindrical shell even though the original one is designed with composite material. In other words, SLM has great potential in improving the primary structure of spacecraft in the future.