Computational Design of Active Lattice Structures for 4D Printed Pneumatic Shape Morphing

With advances in 3D printing and digital fabrication an opportunity is presented to realize highly customized designs whose shape can change and adapt to facilitate their functionality. A computational design method to determine the configuration of 2D pneumatic shape morphing lattices using a direct search method is implemented and assessed. The method is tested using a Kagome unit cell lattice structure, which is particularly well suited for shape morphing. To achieve shape change, beams are replaced by linear actuators such as those found in pneumatic 4D printing, whose number and placement are optimized to replicate a given target shape. The actuator placement and deformation accuracy are given for four main curvature changes: linear, convex, concave and the transition from one to the other. The results are assessed in terms accuracy of deformation and computational effort. It is shown that the method proposed produces structures that can replicate complex shape changes within 1% of the desired shape. Reducing the number of actuators for robustness purposes is shown to affect the results minimally.