Authors: Raghuram Pipalla, Jens Schuster,Yousuf Pasha Shaik.
There is a demand for the development of products in a shorter time that resulted in the introduction of 3D printing which is also termed as “Additive Manufacturing” (AM). This technology has many advantages such as costeffectiveness, less manufacturing time and elimination of post-processing costs. Intensive research is being carried out on cellular structures manufactured using additive manufacturing technologies. Cellular structures have many applications in various areas. When compared to solid structures, these cellular structures possess high strength to weight ratio, good energy absorption characteristics, good thermal and acoustic insulation properties. They are used for aerospace, medical and engineering products. There are many additive manufacturing technologies whereas fused deposition modelling (FDM) is the most versatile one. This research consists of the analysis of hexagonal honeycomb structure by creating honeycomb structures of different dimensions in SolidWorks and manufacturing of those structures by using the FDM additive manufacturing process. These structures were designed by varying the internal hexagon’s wall thickness and side length. After printing these structures were subjected to Mechanical testings like tensile, compression, three-point bending, impact and thermal testing like heat deflection temperature tests. The three-point bending test was simulated numerically and compared with the experimental results. This study is finally validated by comparing experimental and simulation results, which were in agreement with each other. Experimental results show that the low-weight specimen exhibited good mechanical and thermal properties with a lesser printing time compared to the remaining specimens. The specimens with different hexagonal cell dimensions were introduced and discussed.
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