Bending Behavior of Sandwich Composite Structures of 3D-Printed Materials

Abstract

Recently, many researches in 3D printing has focused on designing and printing sandwich honeycomb structures by using additive manufacturing. Their desirable mechanical properties, such as being of high strength/stiffness to weight ratio, appeal to use in the aerospace and automotive industries. Especially, cellular materials and structures are widely used in most of the energy-absorbing mechanisms due to the high strength as well as excellent energy-absorbing properties. In this research, deformation and mechanical strength of the sandwich structures with a honeycomb core, solid cores of the same weight, and the same thickness are compared, respectively. Where the honeycomb core is made of polylactic acid (PLA),and the face sheets are built of ABS. The thickness of the face sheets is kept the same for all the specimens. Therefore, only the differences of the core structures can influence the results of the experiments. According to the experimental results based on Von-Mises stress distribution and deformation rule under the bending loads, a sandwich structure with honeycomb core indicates better mechanical performances in terms of deformation and stress than the bending loads for the same weight.