Investigative Analysis on Mechanical Properties of Laser-Sintered-Nylon Diamond Lattices

Abstract

Additive manufacturing offers a manufacturing technique to produce complex geometry prototypes at a rapid pace and low cost. These advantages advocate additive manufacturing for the design and production of cellular structures. Cellular structures are interesting because they contain a large amount of porosity (void space of air) to manifest a lightweight structure. Designs of cellular structures generate a periodic pattern; often of complex geometry, called a lattice. The research involves PA2200 (Nylon 12) laser sintered diamond lattices with experimental compression testing and direct FEA model comparison. A correction factor is applied for a design offset of laser sintered lattices. Once applied, the experimental and FEA data agree in validating the diamond lattice as a bending-dominated structure. Diamond lattices show a 4th order relationship between stiffness and parameters of thickness and unit cell length. For density, stiffness maintains a 2nd order relationship, as predicted by bending dominated structures. The resulting stiffness can be tuned over a stiffness range of four orders of magnitude. Further research shows the results for modifying the diamond lattice and scaling stiffness and density using other materials (like metals) to expand the range of stiffness and compare diamond lattices on material property charts. Lastly, the effective Poisson’s ratio varies from 0.5 to 0.4 depending on the (t/L) ratio.