Mechanical properties of zirconia octet truss structures fabricated by DLP 3D printing

Abstract

Zirconia ceramic octet-truss structures with various strut size and unit cell numbers were successfully fabricated through a DLP-based 3D printing method. The mechanical properties and energy absorption capacity under compressive load were investigated systematically. The sides of all cubes are 10 mm, the strut size was changed from 0.25 mm to 2 mm, cells number was in the range of 1(1 × 1 × 1)–125(5 × 5 × 5). It has been seen that the relative density, compressive strength and energy absorption increases with the increase of strut size when cell numbers remain the same. It can be concluded that the strength and energy absorption were affected by the relative density, strut size and the stacking mode of the unit cells. So far, with this study, a high compressive strength of 75.3 MPa and a reasonably good energy absorption of 6.76 × 105 J m−3 can be achieved at a relative density of 48.57%.