Mechanical properties of tubular bioinspired metamaterials

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned around the analysis of tubular bioinspired metamaterials and the relationship between their mesostructural characteristics in the cross sectional area and reticulated distribution and their mechanical characteristics under torsional and bending loads. Bioinspiration was taken from Cactaceae family to find cross sectional and void distribution inspiration, once the characteristics were selected a geometrical parameterization was performed. The mechanical characterization was done with the aid of FE models in COMSOL Multiphysics for bending and torsion. As validation some models were printed and tested under bending and torsion as well. The manufacturing of the samples used fused filament fabrication (FFF) with polylactic acid (PLA). Validation of the manufacturing using a microscope was done. The results from this study confirm the influence of the selected characteristics in the bending and torsional stiffness. Being the torsional stiffness being specially sensitive to changes in the cross sectional geometry while the bending stiffness was found to be best modulated by the allowance of the reticulated pattern to leave straight lines of material from one end to the other of the tubular structure.