Tailorable Energy Absorbing Cellular Materials via Sintering of Dry Powder Printed Hollow Glass Microspheres

This article examines amorphous glass-based foams as lightweight core materials for crash-resistant structures that offer tailorable energy absorption capabilities. Hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) of different densities are layered using dry powder printing (DPP), an additive manufacturing process, and subsequently sintered to consolidate these microspheres into a cellular foam structure. The tuning of energy absorption is achieved in these foams by layering hollow microspheres with different densities and different thickness ratios of the layers. The mechanical response to quasi-static uniaxial compression of the bilayer foams is also investigated. Bilayer samples a distinctive two-step stress-strain profile that includes first and second plateau stress, as opposed to a single constant density which does not. The strain at which the second plateau occurs can be tuned by adjusting the thickness ratio of the two layers. The resulting tailorable stress-strain profile demonstrates tailorable energy absorption. Tailorability is found to be more significant if the density values of each layer differ greatly. For comparison, bilayer samples are fabricated using epoxy at the interface instead of the co-sintering process. Epoxy-bonded samples show a different mechanical response from the co-sintered sample with a different stress-strain profile. Designing the bilayer foams enables tailoring of the stress-strain profile, so that energy-absorption requirements can be met for a specific impact condition. The implementation of these materials for energy absorption, crashworthiness, and buoyancy applications will be discussed.