3D Printed Bio-mimetic Energy Absorbers for Aerospace and Defence Applications

Aims:

The project aims to develop 3D printed bio-mimetic and bionic energy-absorbing and damping devices for aerospace and defence applications. The devices will be printed with advanced silicon-based ceramics and polymers and would offer lightweight and tailored energy absorption for electronic packages used in space rockets and military vehicles. It will be realised by exploiting the IITM group’s expertise in designing energy absorbers and the Deakin group’s expertise in 3D printing metamaterials.

;;Background:

We aim to design and develop the next generation of bio-inspired energy absorbers for electronic packages used in strong accelerations such as space rockets and military vehicles. Animals and plants have evolved very effective methods of vibration absorption, which will be further studied and implemented here. The bio-designs for vibration control fall into two categories: bio-mimetic materials and bio-inspired mechanisms (bionics). They consist of materials such as bio-inspired tubes, sandwich panels, plates, and foams inspired by plants (such as bamboo and palm trees) and animals (such as bone-muscle combinations). These hierarchical structures with tubes within tubes and hexagons within hexagons significantly increase specific energy absorption, which can be used for collapse and densification-based energy-absorbing mechanisms. Recently, bionic vibration control by imitating musco-skeletal systems of animals has also been explored. However, the 3D printing of such bio-mimetic and bionic energy absorbers and their fluid-filled counterparts have not been studied for energy absorption.;;

Research Gaps:

The IITM group has designed small capsule-type metallic particle dampers to suppress vibrations of launch vehicle electronic packages, but the weight penalty is high. There has been no work on designing small electronic vibration absorbers using tailored cellular materials; hence, conventional elastomer dampers are still widely used. IITM group has worked on cellular auxetic materials combined with multi-objective optimisation to produce tailor-made materials for high energy absorption. The group at Deakin has recently developed new materials and methods to 3D print advanced silicon-based ceramics and polymers, such as polydimethylsiloxane, silicon oxycarbide, and glass-ceramic composites with biomimicking hierarchical porosity. They can be printed with a nanometre resolution to obtain miniaturised intimate replicas of nature’s best energy absorbers. They have also developed high-resolution microfluidic printing methods, which would aid the development of fluid-filled bionic structures for better energy absorption. The pilot data collected from these projects lay the foundation for three objectives of the proposed work:

(1) Designing bio-memetic and fluid-filled microchannel-based energy absorbers based on ab initio modelling,

(2) 3D printing computationally optimised energy absorbers with thermally, chemically, and mechanically stable silicon-based ceramics and polymers,

(3) Investigation of the printed energy absorbers for shock protection in electronic packages during space exploration. ;;

The collaboration between IITM and DU through this project is expected to leverage their independent strengths in ab initio modelling and 3D printing and exploit them to design and develop the next generation of energy absorbers for space exploration.;