Tailoring plastic deformation of metallic architected materials toward multi-stage energy dissipations

Abstract

Architected materials composed of instability-based unit cells have been exploited in energy dissipation/absorption applications. One stability-based unit cell type that comprises slender beams can experience geometrical nonlinearities under small forces. Although reusability provided by these materials is attractive to engineering applications, the intrinsic drawback of this mechanism is the low load-carry capacity. Here, we attempt to increase the capacity of instability-based architected materials by inducing material nonlinearity of metallic materials. Through experimental tests and numerical simulations, this work investigates the plastic deformation of metallic architected materials using curved beams (MAM-CB) and their resulting energy dissipation capacity. We first investigated the mechanical properties of various MAM-CB unit cells, and finally studied the tradeoff between energy dissipation and fatigue life by embedding a geometrical gradient. In addition, we presented a method to enhance the energy dissipation capacity of a conventional structure by adapting MAM-CB units to form a new hybrid structural device. Furthermore, this method is showcased by using MAM-CB units under a possible scenario in seismic engineering, aimed to develop novel damping components with enhanced and customizable energy-dissipating properties. Our study paves the way for applying architected materials as augmented structures to strengthen the performance of the existing structures.