Proceedings of the XMO Industrial Seminar 2026: Excellence in Manufacturing and Operations
Keywords
Bio-inspired designs; Additive manufacturing (AM); Lightweighting
Tracks
MULTIFUNCTIONAL AND RESILIENT DESIGNS FOR MANUFACTURING
DOI
10.5703/1288284318689
Abstract
This paper explores the feasibility of extracting biological design information from multiple species for manufacturing functional lightweight architectures. Biology offers a vast range of designs, materials, and organizational strategies to achieve these goals. Over the past few years, additive manufacturing (AM) has been increasingly applied to manufacture various bio-inspired lattice geometries. Commonly, this approach involves taking inspiration from one specific biological example for manufacturing and testing. However, converging multiple biological design ideas into a single engineering structure for manufacturing is rarely reported. In this work, design inspirations from two biological species (cuttlefish and mantis shrimp) are combined to model various bio-inspired designs for AM. These two species were chosen based on their potential compatibility based on common ecological environment, structural features, and target functionalities from the review and classification of multiple biological examples of interest for lightweighting. The hybrid designs also considered the constraints from the laser powder-bed fusion (process) equipment, stainless steel 316L (material), and compression testing (validation). The designs were examined through finite element analysis (FEA) simulations for compression strength and indicated better stiffness and load distribution capabilities of the hybrid lattice design. Future work is aimed at manufacturing and systematic testing of the proposed hybrid bio-inspired designs.
Hybrid Bio-Inspired Design Approach for Lightweighting in Additive Manufacturing: A Feasibility Study
This paper explores the feasibility of extracting biological design information from multiple species for manufacturing functional lightweight architectures. Biology offers a vast range of designs, materials, and organizational strategies to achieve these goals. Over the past few years, additive manufacturing (AM) has been increasingly applied to manufacture various bio-inspired lattice geometries. Commonly, this approach involves taking inspiration from one specific biological example for manufacturing and testing. However, converging multiple biological design ideas into a single engineering structure for manufacturing is rarely reported. In this work, design inspirations from two biological species (cuttlefish and mantis shrimp) are combined to model various bio-inspired designs for AM. These two species were chosen based on their potential compatibility based on common ecological environment, structural features, and target functionalities from the review and classification of multiple biological examples of interest for lightweighting. The hybrid designs also considered the constraints from the laser powder-bed fusion (process) equipment, stainless steel 316L (material), and compression testing (validation). The designs were examined through finite element analysis (FEA) simulations for compression strength and indicated better stiffness and load distribution capabilities of the hybrid lattice design. Future work is aimed at manufacturing and systematic testing of the proposed hybrid bio-inspired designs.