The natural Honeycomb structure is one of the most common cores used in sandwich panel cores since it offers good mechanical properties and sandwich panel cores are constantly being utilised in the aerospace, train, maritime and automobile industries. However, there are other unexplored natural structures that can potentially offer better mechanical properties than the Honeycomb structure such as the Enamel structure because it is a very durable and hard material in the human body. Hence, the first part of the research investigated if the Enamel structure can potentially be integrated into sandwich panel cores to provide better mechanical properties than the Honeycomb structure.Secondary data was obtained from the research done by Bru, et al (2019) who tested the natural structures that were 3D printed with an FDM printer with PLA material and they obtained the natural structures’ compressive strength, stiffness and energy absorption capabilities.A DOE with eight experiments was generated by varying the wall thickness and the Honeycomb’s wall length and Enamel’s cell radius to attain a detailed analysis. However, Bru et al (2019) only provided four of the experiments since they kept a constant cell wall-length of 10 mm for the Honeycomb specimens and a constant cell-radius of 8.14 mm for the Enamel specimens. Therefore, the Fuzzy Logic Algorithm was used to generate the missing data points.Once all the necessary data was obtained, ANOVAs and Perturbation graphs were used to analyse the data and the Desirability Index Optimisation technique was used to suggest the optimal natural structures with their cellular configurations.Indeed, it was found that the Enamel structure could potentially replace the common Honeycomb structure because the Enamel structure has better stiffness and energy absorption capabilities and even though the Honeycomb structure has a slightly higher compressive strength, the Enamel Structure can still withstand similar loads as the Honeycomb structure. Also, the Desirability Optimisation Index technique suggested the optimal design that will maximize the compressive strength, energy absorption and stiffness is the Enamel design with a cell-radius of 8.14 mm and a wall thickness of 1.2 mm.Also, both the Honeycomb and Enamel structures with a wall thickness of 1.2 mm and a wall-length/cell radius of 8.14 mm mm have good compressive strength. Therefore, there are prospects for these natural structures to be integrated into other products that also require good compressive strength, such as automobile floor mats.Current automobile floor mats have several design issues, mainly its inefficient debris/liquid capturing and removal system. Hence, the second part of the study focused on creating a novel automobile floor mat that has additional design features that will offer a more efficient debris capturing and removal system and incorporates the Honeycomb and Enamel structures into its design to ensure the novel automobile floor mat possesses good strength to resist failure or permanent deformation. Furthermore, this novel automobile floor mat is made of ABS material and can be 3D printed with an FDM printer.The novel automobile floor mats consist of two components, the natural structure that withstands the constant impact and friction of peoples' shoes to reduce the excessive wear of the vehicle’s interior floor and a bottom container that holds the debris from peoples’ shoes to reduce the amount of debris that can get deposited on the vehicle’s carpet. Furthermore, the container can easily be detached from the bio-inspired structure to empty the debris that has accumulated at the bottom of the container to allow for a highly efficient cleaning process without any water or cleaning agents.A Finite Element Analysis was undertaken to simulate a compressive force onto the mats’ structures to investigate if the novel automobile floor mat can withstand the applied loads. Indeed, the novel automobile floor mat could withstand the loads without failure or permanent deformation. Furthermore, the validation, verification and significance of the final designs were also explored.&nbsp;

Assessing the Mechanical Properties of 3d Printed Bio-Inspired Structures and Integrating the Structures Into a Product

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/MSEC/MSEC2021/volume/85062

2021 International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC2021)

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