experimental and numerical analysis of energy absorption in 3d-printed auxetic and combined lattice structures under quasi-static loading

This study presents an experimental and numerical analysis of the energy absorption (ea) performance of four types of 3d-printed polylactic acid (pla) lattice structures under quasi-static compression. the structures included two uniform designs honeycomb (sample 1) and re-entrant (sample 2) and two hybrid designs (samples 3 and 4) combining these unit cells. experimental testing and finite element simulation revealed that the hybrid designs significantly outperformed their uniform counterparts. between the cases, sample 4 achieved the highest specific energy absorption (sea) of 2.41 kj/kg, surpassing sample 1 (1.51 kj/kg) by 62% and sample 2 (1.65 kj/kg) by 33%. it also exhibited the highest total ea of 120.15 j and a mean crushing force (mcf) of 5982.96 n. sample 3 followed closely with an sea of 2.24 kj/kg. finite element analysis showed strong correlation with experimental data, with differences in sea values across all samples ranging from 9.36% to 16.67%. the results conclusively demonstrate that strategic geometric hybridization of unit cells is a highly effective method for enhancing ea metrics in lightweight structures this study presents an experimental and numerical analysis of the energy absorption (ea) performance of four types of 3d-printed polylactic acid (pla) lattice structures under quasi-static compression. the structures included two uniform designs honeycomb (sample 1) and re-entrant (sample 2) and two hybrid designs (samples 3 and 4) combining these unit cells. experimental testing and finite element simulation revealed that the hybrid designs significantly outperformed their uniform counterparts. between the cases, sample 4 achieved the highest specific energy absorption (sea) of 2.41 kj/kg, surpassing sample 1 (1.51 kj/kg) by 62% and sample 2 (1.65 kj/kg) by 33%. it also exhibited the highest total ea of 120.15 j and a mean crushing force (mcf) of 5982.96 n. sample 3 followed closely with an sea of 2.24 kj/kg. finite element analysis showed strong correlation with experimental data, with differences in sea values across all samples ranging from 9.36% to 16.67%. the results conclusively demonstrate that strategic geometric hybridization of unit cells is a highly effective method for enhancing ea metrics in lightweight structures.