Material extrusion additive manufacturing of novel lightweight collinear stayed polymer lattices

Abstract

A novel type of lightweight and high-performance, collinear polymer lattices is presented in which the concept of stayed slender columns is exploited with the aid of material extrusion additive manufacturing (MEX). The stays, preventing lower order buckling, are additively manufactured using the printing strategy bridging. Through conducting experimental test series on representative elements and two-dimensional lattices, it is demonstrated that the 3D printed stayed column lattices exhibit significantly improved compressive strength in comparison with conventional collinear lattices. The potential of introducing deliberate geometric imperfections to affect the structural behaviour is furthermore outlined in the current work.