Fabrication and Mechanical Testing of the Uniaxial Graded Auxetic Damper

Abstract

Auxetic structures can be used as protective sacrificial solutions for impact protection with lightweight and excellent energy-dissipation characteristics. A recently published and pa-tented shock-absorbing system, namely, Uniaxial Graded Auxetic Damper (UGAD), proved its ef-ficiency through comprehensive analytical and computational analyses. However, the authors highlighted the necessity for experimental testing of this new damper. Hence, this paper aimed to fabricate the UGAD using a cost-effective method and determine its load–deformation properties and energy-absorption potential experimentally and computationally. The geometry of the UGAD, fabrication technique, experimental setup, and computational model are presented. A series of dog-bone samples were tested to determine the exact properties of aluminium alloy (AW-5754, T-111). A simplified (elastic, plastic with strain hardening) material model was proposed and val-idated for use in future computational simulations. Results showed that deformation pattern, progressive collapse, and force–displacement relationships of the manufactured UGAD are in excellent agreement with the computational predictions, thus validating the proposed computational and material models.