Quantitative surface characterisation and stress concentration of additively manufactured NiTi lattice struts

With the advancement of metal additive manufacturing (AM), lattice structures become a promising solution to situations that require lightweight design and yet maintain adequate mechanical strength. Limited by the quality of feedstock materials, the layer-wise process characteristic and the dynamic nature of thermal environment, lattice structures made by AM often suffer from process-induced imperfections such as poor surface finish and notable geometric deviation. In this study, systematic quantitative characterisation methods are developed to address surface quality and geometric discrepancy of NiTi lattice struts made by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), with a special focus on fatigue-related features such as stress concentration factors. The results show that for the examined strut diameters and inclination angles, the strut diameter plays a significant role in geometry inaccuracy and the inclination angle has a greater effect on surface texture and stress concentration factor distribution on the surface. Lattice struts with diameters greater than 0.7 mm and inclination angles over 40° with respect to the platform exhibit superior manufacturing quality among all configurations of the struts. The proposed approach not only opens a new avenue to evaluate μ-CT data in a more quantitative way but also offers opportunities to develop guidelines for lattice structure design.