Abstract
The main objective of this paper is to introduce complex structures with self-bending/morphing/rolling features fabricated by 4D printing technology, and replicate their thermo-mechanical behaviors using a simple computational tool. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is implemented to fabricate adaptive composite structures with performance-driven functionality built directly into materials. Structural primitives with self-bending 1D-to-2D features are first developed by functionally graded 4D printing. They are then employed as actuation elements to design complex structures that show 2D-to-3D shape-shifting by self-bending/morphing. The effects of printing speed on the self-bending/morphing characteristics are investigated in detail. Thermo-mechanical behaviors of the 4D-printed structures are simulated by introducing a straightforward method into the commercial finite element (FE) software package of Abaqus that is much simpler than writing a user-defined material subroutine or an in-house FE code. The high accuracy of the proposed method is verified by a comparison study with experiments and numerical results obtained from an in-house FE solution. Finally, the developed digital tool is implemented to engineer several practical self-morphing/rolling structures.
Highlights
In recent years, three-dimensional (3D) printing has dramatically been developed in various industrial fields to construct structures with complicated 3D shapes based on computer-aided design(CAD) models [1]
The process of creating 3D objects was invented in 1986 by Charles Hull and introduced as additive manufacturing (AM), rapid prototyping (RP), or solid-freeform (SFF) [2]. This convenient technology could construct 3D structures with thermoplastic polymer materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) [3,4,5], polylactic acid (PLA) [3,5,6], polyamide (PA) [7], and polycarbonate (PC) [8], that were already being used for biomechanics [9], optical metamaterials [10], smart textiles [11], and other applications
Inspired by shape memory polymers (SMPs) features, we show the potentials of 3D printing in the design and development of the adaptive metamaterials
Summary
Three-dimensional (3D) printing has dramatically been developed in various industrial fields to construct structures with complicated 3D shapes based on computer-aided design(CAD) models [1]. The process of creating 3D objects was invented in 1986 by Charles Hull and introduced as additive manufacturing (AM), rapid prototyping (RP), or solid-freeform (SFF) [2] This convenient technology could construct 3D structures with thermoplastic polymer materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) [3,4,5], polylactic acid (PLA) [3,5,6], polyamide (PA) [7], and polycarbonate (PC) [8], that were already being used for biomechanics [9], optical metamaterials [10], smart textiles [11], and other applications. Wang et al [15] showed
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