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J. Stampfl, H. E. Pettermann, R. Liska:
"Bioinspired Cellular Structures: Additive Manufacturing and Mechanical Properties";
in: "Biomimetics - Materials, Structures and Processes", P. Gruber, D. Bruckner, Ch. Hellmich, H. Schmiedmayer, H. Stachelberger, I. Gebeshuber (ed.); Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2011, ISBN: 978-3642119330, 105 - 123.

Biological materials (e.g., wood, trabecular bone, marine skeletons) rely heavily on the use of cellular architecture, which provides several advantages. (1) The resulting structures can bear the variety of "real life" load spectra using a minimum of a given bulk material, featuring engineering lightweight design principles. (2) The inside of the structures is accessible to body fluids which deliver the required nutrients. (3) Furthermore, cellular architectures can grow organically by adding or removing individual struts or by changing the shape of the constituting elements. All these facts make the use of cellular architectures a reasonable choice for nature. Using additive manufacturing technologies (AMT), it is now possible to fabricate such structures for applications in engineering and biomedicine. In this chapter, we present methods that allow the 3D computational analysis of the mechanical properties of cellular structures with open porosity. Various different cellular architectures including disorder are studied. In order to quantify the influence of architecture, the apparent density is always kept constant. Furthermore, it is shown that how new advanced photopolymers can be used to tailor the mechanical and functional properties of the fabricated structures.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11934-7_6

Project Head Heinz E. Pettermann:
Modellierung und Simulation der mechanischen Eigenschaften offenzelliger biomimetischer Strukturen