A 99-Line Homogenization Code for Lattice-skin Plate Structures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 99-line open-source homogenization code tailored for lattice-skin plate structures, addressing boundary effects and enabling efficient multiscale analysis for lightweight structural design.

Contribution

The study develops and releases a simple, effective homogenization framework specifically for finite-thickness lattice-skin plates, improving property prediction accuracy.

Findings

Framework accurately extracts effective stiffness matrices.

Code can be extended for multiphase and heat conduction analysis.

Open-source tool supports high-fidelity lightweight structure design.

Abstract

Recent years have seen growing application potential for Lattice-skin Plate Structures in advanced manufacturing fields such as aerospace and automotive engineering. For multiscale performance evaluation of such structures, conventional homogenization methods for lattice-filled volume structures are often used for equivalent analysis. However, in finite-thickness Lattice-skin Plate Structures, periodic boundary conditions imposed along the three orthogonal directions of the representative cell cannot adequately capture the boundary effect of the free surfaces in the thickness direction, which introduces bias into the prediction of effective properties. To reduce this bias, this study develops and open-sources a homogenization method for Lattice-skin Plate Structures, forming an open-source computational framework for this class of structures. Representative numerical examples show that the framework can stably extract effective plate/shell stiffness matrices and can be extended to predict multiphase material properties and analyze steady-state heat conduction. The tool provides an open and reusable analysis foundation for the high-fidelity design of multifunctional lightweight structures.