Abstract: The lattice structure has become one of the most important research fields in the design and manufacture of complex structures in additive manufacturing, because of its special mechanical properties. The conventional method for model lattice structure generation is achieved by trimming the parametric modeling lattice structure grid or by performing conformal deformation of the lattice structure. Such methods are relatively inefficient. A conformal lattice structure generation method was proposed based on parametric surface for additive manufacturing, which can realize the adaptation and efficient generation of lattice structure in surface space. Firstly, a matrix-based approach was proposed to express and construct the lattice structure frame. Then, three types of enclosed spaces, which were formed by point-surface, curve-surface, and surface-surface patterns, were implemented to perform conformal transformation on the lattice frame to adapt the surface space. Finally, a grid generation and splicing method based on the lattice structure skeleton was employed to generate the mesh model of the conformal lattice structure. The parametric surface was extracted from the CATIA model based on CAA to generate the conformal lattice structures effectively, and the structures can adapt to the surface space well, which proves the potential value for the engineering implementation and application of the method. 

Key words: additive manufacturing, lattice structure, parametric surface, conformal transformation, component application architecture