Energy absorption of 2D auxetic structures fabricated by fused deposition modeling

Auxetic structures have become a very popular subject in recent years due to their interesting physical and mechanical properties such as light weight, energy absorption capability, and impact resistance. In this context, the current experimental study presents a detail investigation on the energy absorption performance of re-entrant auxetic structures having different design parameters (i.e., strut orientation, strut angle, and strut thickness) under axial quasi-static condition. The auxetic structures were produced by the fused deposition modeling method and the energy absorption performances of the structures were evaluated using various crashworthiness indicators such as energy absorption (EA), specific energy absorption (SEA), mean crash force (MCF), peak crash force (PCF) and crash force efficiency (CFE). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also implemented to determine the influence of design parameters on MCF, SEA and CFE. The results showed that the strut thickness is the highest influencing parameter on the values for all chosen energy absorption criteria. In particular, the contribution ratios of strut thickness, strut angle and strut orientation on the values of SEA are 74.99, 11.45 and 3.25%, respectively.