The most common cellular solids are foams designed for energy absorption and cushioning, though they can also be selected as materials for thermal and acoustic insulation. Because of their stochastic nature, foams can have a significant variance in their mechanical properties, which limits the ability to develop predictive stress response and aging models. In addition, local heterogeneities can adversely affect performance especially in extreme environments. Instead of manipulating properties with material variation, cellular solids with ordered architectures allow the design to be based solely on the structure geometry. Directional and local responses can also be directly incorporated into the architecture.  Direct ink writing (DIW), a 3D additive manufacturing process, is especially well-suited to create such complex structures with engineered properties. Finite element analysis provides the opportunity to explore the structure-property relationship of cellular solids with micro-scale continuum features. Here, I present compression and shear simulation results of silicone stochastic foams and 3D printed porous elastomeric architectures. The foam structure was obtained from x-ray computed tomography, whereas the ordered architecture models are based on analytical designs and knowledge of the DIW process. Figure 1 shows examples of the two types of materials. Their mechanical performance is compared and some of the unique properties of the additive geometries are discussed. This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

Compression simulations of silocone cellular solids with ordered and stochastic micro-structures

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.