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Project # 64
Tailorable Energy-Absorbing Beam Lattices for Advanced Air Mobility Structures
| Team Lead: | Bryce Peacock |
| Other Team Members: | Deeva Khanuja | Keylan Phan |
| Faculty Advisor(s): | Dr. Xin Liu |
| Department: | MAE |
| Project Type: | REU |
| Title: | Tailorable Energy-Absorbing Beam Lattices for Advanced Air Mobility Structures |
| Abstract: | Lightweight structures for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) applications must efficiently dissipate impact energy under different landing conditions. This project investigates additively manufactured I-beam lattice structures with tailorable localized reinforcements designed to enhance energy absorption under quasi-static crushing. A combined experimental and finite element (FE) framework is developed to characterize and optimize lattice performance. Uniaxial tensile tests are conducted on four photopolymer resins (FLX9870, FLX9895, RGDA8530, and RGDA8520) to obtain elastoplastic material properties for a multi-material crush model. Constitutive behavior extracted from stress-strain data is implemented in Abaqus to capture nonlinear deformation during compression. The lattices are fabricated and tested under quasi-static crushing, and the resulting stress-strain responses are used to calibrate and validate the FE simulations. The results will demonstrate that localized reinforcements within I-beam cross-sections significantly influence stiffness, collapse mechanisms, and overall energy absorption capacity. This work establishes a validated computational and experimental approach for designing tailorable energy-absorbing lattice structures for next-generation AAM structures. |
| Poster: | View Poster #64 (PDF) |
| Judges Scoring: | Submit Evaluation (judges only) |