Design of Cellular Materials and Mesostructures with Improved Structural and Thermal Performances

Honeycomb mesostructures and other types of cellular material such as wood, coral, and cancellous bone have properties that make them suitable for use in many structural engineering applications. This includes not only superior mechanical behavior and lightweight high-strength characteristics, but also better thermal conductivity, electrical resistivity, etc. A good understanding of these structures and materials can help structural engineers to design lightweight building systems with, for example, improved stability combined with improved thermal and acoustic insulation. Moreover, advances in additive manufacturing methods capable of producing these cellular structures also add to the motivation. In this paper, the application of cellular materials for construction applications in the building sector is illustrated and FEM analysis is used to examine several types of mesostructures. Furthermore, we focus on optimizing the equivalent thermal conductivity and stiffness of structures with a relative density of 0.5. Special attention is given to situations for which the required properties are not necessarily equal in all directions. Results show that using multidisciplinary topology optimization methods, the structural and thermal performances of these structures can be efficiently optimized.