Cellular architectures are promising in a variety of engineering applications due to attractive material properties. Additive manufacturing has reduced the difficulty in the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) cellular materials. In this paper, the numerical homogenization method for 3D cellular materials is provided based on a short, self-contained matlab code. It is an educational description that shows how the homogenized constitutive matrix is computed by a voxel model with one material to be void and another material to be solid. A voxel generation algorithm is proposed to generate the voxel model easily by the wireframe scripts of unit cell topologies. The format of the wireframe script is defined so that the topology can be customized. The homogenization code is then extended to multimaterial cellular structures and thermal conductivity problems. The result of the numerical homogenization shows that different topologies exhibit anisotropic elastic properties to a different extent. It is also found that the anisotropy of cellular materials can be controlled by adjusting the combination of materials.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the state-of–the-art design methods for additive manufacturing (AM) technologies to improve functional performance. In this survey, design methods for AM to improve functional performance are divided into two main groups. They are design methods for a specific objective and general design methods. Design methods in the first group primarily focus on the improvement of functional performance, while the second group also takes other important factors such as manufacturability and cost into consideration with a more general framework. Design methods in each groups are carefully reviewed with discussion and comparison. The advantages and disadvantages of different design methods for AM are discussed in this paper. Some general issues of existing methods are summarized below: most existing design methods only focus on a single design scale with a single function; few product-level design methods are available for both products’ functionality and assembly; and some existing design methods are hard to implement for the lack of suitable computer-aided design software. This study is a useful source for designers to select an appropriate design method to take full advantage of AM. In this survey, a novel classification method is used to categorize existing design methods for AM. Based on this classification method, a comprehensive review is provided in this paper as an informative source for designers and researchers working in this field.