High‐Temperature Creep Behavior of Selective‐Laser‐Melting‐Fabricated Lattice Structures Inspired from Euplectella Aspergillum

Abstract

In this study, the lattice‐like arrangement of Euplectella aspergillum is used to derive bionic grid‐stiffened structures in the form of thin tubes. The bionic tubes are 3D printed with AlSi10Mg alloy using a selective laser melting process. High‐temperature creep behavior at 250 °C and stress (0.3–0.7) times yield strength of the tubes is studied under uniaxial constant compressive load. The effect of the stress level, temperature, and tube design on the creep performance and deformation behavior is studied. The creep performance of bioinspired tubes is compared with honeycomb lattice tubes. In the results, the dependence of creep life and creep rate on the design of the bionic tubes is shown. E. aspergillum–based thin tubes show higher creep life and lower creep rate as compared to honeycomb‐based tubes at all stress levels. Also, the creep curves of lattice structures based thin tubes are different than the solid material, especially in the primary and tertiary regions. The fractography analysis shows higher creep life in E. aspergillum–inspired thin tubes is due to the improvement in ductility at high temperature. The stress exponent value in the Mukherjee–Bird–Dorn equation shows that the mechanism of creep is diffusion. Herein, in the results, it is shown that the bioinspiration and additive manufacturing provide an opportunity to design and fabricate advanced iso‐grids structures.