Experimental and numerical analysis of the bending behavior of 3D printed modified auxetic sandwich structures

Abstract

In this study, numerical and experimental investigation of 3D printed auxetic core sandwich structure has been performed through quasi-static 3-point bending testing. The flexural bending properties of a modified re-entrant structure is investigated and it's performance is compared with conventional re-entrant auxetic core. A numerical model has been developed using a commercial finite element (FE) analysis package and used for further analyzing the mechanical behavior of sandwich structures. Good agreement was observed between the experimental and FE results. It was found that the structures with modified re-entrant core outperformed with greater energy absorption (32.9 J) due to its flat pleatue area under the force–displacement curve with highest displacement (among all cases) before the failure, while the rotated version of the conventional re-entrant structure showed the maximum load-bearing capacity (1013 N).