Incorporation of Defects in Finite Elements to Model Effective Mechanical Properties of Metamaterial Cells Printed by Selective Laser Melting

Additively printed mechanical metamaterial structures optimize material, energy and waste, producing more sustainable products. Their introduction in the production workflow depends on having proper tools for accurately predicting their performance. However, the additive manufacturing process incorporates significant defects which result in an important change of the effective properties of the metamaterial cell. Finite element predictions using perfect geometries and nominal base material properties result in important errors which may require excessive uncertainty-related safety design margins. This work presents a methodology to introduce the effect of the most common defects in finite element models to compute the effective mechanical response of different metamaterials printed by Selective Laser Melting. It is shown that even at elastic infinitesimal strains, the defects produce an important change in the effective mechanical capabilities of the metamaterial, which also depend on the type of the metamaterial cell studied and on the type and magnitude of defects. With the proposed methodology, which incorporates the distribution of defects in the finite element model, the predicted mechanical properties of the metamaterial better match the experimental ones. It is shown that the initial discrepancies in the order of 100% are reduced to an order of 5%.