AM has redefined complexity: shapes once impossible to produce can now be engineered to control weight, mechanical response, and functional performance. Lattice structures and metamaterials represent a new paradigm where geometry itself becomes a design variable, enabling a new family of components with properties tailored for advanced applications. However, greater geometrical complexity also introduces new manufacturing challenges. Thin features, internal architectures and intricate geometries are highly sensitive to process instabilities and can lead to dimensional deviations, defects and unpredictable performance.
We develop advanced solutions that combine process optimization, in-situ monitoring and adaptive control strategies to enable reliable, first-time-right production of complex AM components. Our research bridges product and process qualification: on one side, we develop big data-mining methods to model and assess the quality of full 3D and complex shapes; on the other, we shift qualification from the product to the process addressing one of the major barriers to industrial adoption: the high cost and complexity of qualifying products with unprecedented geometries.
