Design of 3D Printed Architected Textiles

Textiles constitute the foundation of various state-of-the-art applications in medicine and healthcare technology, soft robotics and smart interfaces. The often complex requirements of textiles require their properties to vary in time and space. Additive manufacturing enables surpassing the traditional textile manufacturing method of assembling textiles from continuous yarns and enables spatial modifications in the yarn material and textile pattern.

The goal of this research is to design architected textiles and to develop a method for the inverse design of 3D-printed textiles to tune them for defined mechanical requirements. This is especially challenging due to the vast design space enabled by additive manufacturing that allows variation of the yarn structure, material and textile pattern. To support this goal a specialized simulation is also under development.