Experimental and numerical investigation of the static behavior of a 3D printed bio-based anti-trichiral sandwich

Abstract

In this work, the analysis of the static behavior of the composite honeycomb and anti-trichiral sandwich is studied. The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of cellular geometrical parameters which are the ligament length and the cylindrical node radius on the static properties of the anti-trichiral structures. The core and the sandwiches were made from the same biobased material which is polylactic acid with flax fibers (Flax/PLA Material). 3D printing technology was used to manufacture the specimens. Several tensile tests were performed on the anti-trichiral core while bending tests were carried out on the sandwich structures. Several specimens with different geometric parameters of the anti-trichiral unit cell are tested to study their effect on the static properties of this material. The results show that the static properties of the anti-trichiral shaped meta-material depend on the unit cell dimensions. The Poisson’s ratio varies from 1 to −1 and from 0.5 to−0.8 respectively for one-cell and two-cell cores in width. To validate the experimental results, numerical simulations were carried out. Experimental and computational results for the Poisson’s ratio were quite similar.