Topology optimization of phononic-like structures using experimental material interpolation model for additive manufactured lattice infills

Abstract Phononic crystals (PnCs) have seen increasing popularity due to band gap property for sound wave propagation. As a natural bridge, topology optimization has been applied to the design of PnCs. However, thus far most of the existent works on topological design of PnCs have been focused on single micro-scale topology optimization of a periodical unit cell. Moreover, practical manufacturing of those designed structures has been rarely involved. This paper presents a quasi two-scale topology optimization framework suitable for additive manufacturing (AM) implementation to design 2D phononic-like structures with respect to sound transmission coefficient (STC). A designate topology is employed and subjected to sizing optimization in the micro-scale design. The thin-walled square lattice structures made of single metal material are selected as the infills for the design domain to guarantee material connectivity in the optimized design in order to facilitate fabrication by AM. The practical effective mechanical property of the lattice structures with different volume densities obtained by experimental measurement is employed in the topology optimization. The proposed framework is applied to the design of 2D phononic-like structures with different macroscopic shapes for the desired band gap feature. Numerical examples show the desired band gap containing a prescribed excitation frequency can be realized through the proposed quasi two-scale topology optimization method. Moreover, the optimized designs are reconstructed into CAD files with the thin-walled lattice infills. The reconstruction makes fabrication of the optimized designs feasible by practical AM process .