Mechanical Behavior of 3D-Printed Banana Pseudostem-Like Structure

Abstract

Studying nature-inspired structure is important to know how nature can adapt with environmental loading and how to emulate this structure for engineering applications. In this work, banana Pseudostem-like structure were fabricated using Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) type of 3D Printer using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) material. Specimens for tensile test with angle variation of 0 , 15 and 30 were produced and tensile tested. Results show that the specimen with 0o is able withstand higher load because no lateral strain at the outer walls of the specimen due to the absence of the reorientation of the secondary walls. It can be inferred that the natural design of pseudostem structure that has low angle of longitudinal walls are useful to hold the tensile load. The current results on tensile behavior of pseudostem-like structure could open up new engineering applications such as architected microstructures for mechanical energy absorber.