Influence of Loading Rate and Temperature on the Energy Absorption of 3D-Printed Polymeric Origami Tubes under Quasi-Static Loading

Abstract

Owing to deformation in the form of the diamond mode with high-energy absorption capacity, origami thin-walled tubes have attracted considerable attention in recent years. Stamping and welding are mainly employed to produce different types of origami thin-walled tubes. The processing defects and geometric asymmetry may be caused by the manufacturing process, which changes the collapsed mode and decreases the energy-absorbing capacity. In this study, fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing is used to fabricate the origami-ending tube (OET) by integrated formation. Experiments and numerical simulations were conducted to study the influence of loading rate and temperature on the energy absorption of polymeric origami tubes under quasi-static loading. The experiments showed that different constitutive models are needed to capture the complex true stress–strain behavior of 3D printing polylactic acid (PLA) material at different temperatures. The damage model is established and then applied to the numerical simulations, which could predict the collapsed mode and the damage behavior of the OET tubes under different loading rates at 30 °C, 40 °C, and 50 °C. Based on the experiments and the validated numerical model, the influence of loading rate and temperature on the crashworthiness performance of the OET tubes is analyzed.