Design Freedoms of Lattice Structures for Interlock Bonding

Additive manufacturing (AM) enables new design freedoms that are often not fully utilized for complexity and price reasons. Lattice structures are one use case of AM that, despite being frequently utilized in lightweight design, is not commonly used in other areas. Bonding low adhesion materials through interlocking lattice structures uses the design freedom of AM in a new and innovative way, however the design of these structures is highly complex and the mechanical behavior is not easily understood. In order to completely tap into design potentials of such structures, it is first necessary to understand the design freedoms of lattice structures in general to then apply this knowledge to bonding by interlocking lattices specifically. This publication aims to show how lattice structures are designed in a fast and repeatable manner in a CAD environment and tries to show the design freedoms of these lattice structures. These insights are then applied to the use case of bonding by interlocking. It is shown that by using interlocking lattices, the bonding strength of bonds for low adhesion polymers can be significantly increased while achieving low standard deviations, even compared to established methods of increasing bonding strength like plasma pre-treatment.