Todd Lucy, Chin Matthew H W, Coppens Marc-Olivier
Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering & Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London Torrington Place London WC1E 7JE United Kingdom
Mol Syst Des Eng. 2024 May 24;9(9):912-919. doi: 10.1039/d4me00036f. eCollection 2024 Aug 27.
3D Voronoi scaffolds are widely applied in the field of additive manufacturing as they are known for their light weight structural resilience and share many topological similarities to various natural (bone, tumours, lymph node) and synthetic environments (foam, functionally gradient porous materials). Unfortunately, the structural design features that promote these topological similarities (such as the number of vertices) are often unpredictable and require the trial and error of varying design features to achieve the desired 3D Voronoi structure. This article provides a toolkit, consisting of equations, based on over 12 000 3D Voronoi structures. These equations allow design features, such as the number of generating points (), to be efficiently and accurately predicted based on the desired structural parameters (within ±3). Based on these equations we are proposing, to the best of our knowledge, two new mathematical conjectures that relate the number of vertices or edges, and the average edge length to in Voronoi structures. These equations have been validated for a wide range of parameter values and Voronoi network sizes. A design code is provided allowing any of over 12 000 structures to be selected, easily adjusted based on user requirements, and 3D printed. Biomedical case studies relevant to T-cell culturing, bone scaffolds and kidney tumours are presented to illustrate the design code.
3D 沃罗诺伊支架因其轻质的结构弹性而在增材制造领域得到广泛应用,并且与各种天然(骨骼、肿瘤、淋巴结)和合成环境(泡沫、功能梯度多孔材料)具有许多拓扑相似性。不幸的是,促进这些拓扑相似性的结构设计特征(例如顶点数量)往往不可预测,需要通过对不同设计特征进行反复试验才能实现所需的 3D 沃罗诺伊结构。本文提供了一个由方程组成的工具包,该工具包基于超过 12000 个 3D 沃罗诺伊结构。这些方程能够根据所需的结构参数(误差在±3 以内)高效且准确地预测诸如生成点数量()等设计特征。据我们所知,基于这些方程,我们提出了两个新的数学猜想,它们将沃罗诺伊结构中的顶点或边的数量以及平均边长与联系起来。这些方程已在广泛的参数值和沃罗诺伊网络尺寸范围内得到验证。提供了一个设计代码,允许从超过 12000 种结构中选择任何一种,根据用户需求轻松调整,并进行 3D 打印。还展示了与 T 细胞培养、骨支架和肾肿瘤相关的生物医学案例研究,以说明该设计代码。