About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2027 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Accelerating Innovation in Materials and Manufacturing
|
| Presentation Title |
Tensegrity-Inspired Lattices for Orientation-Invariant Impact Protection |
| Author(s) |
Audrey Christiansen, Marcus Madsen, Jinkwan Han, Jeff Hill, Sterling Baird |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Audrey Christiansen |
| Abstract Scope |
Planetary landers cannot dictate their impact orientation, yet conventional energy absorbers—honeycombs crushed in-plane, thin-walled crash tubes loaded obliquely, corrugated cores loaded transversely—degrade sharply off-axis. We present a closed-loop design-print-test framework using Bayesian optimization to design tensegrity-inspired lattices with orientation-insensitive energy absorption: hexagonal cells whose rigid PLA struts carry compression in a continuous TPU tension network, co-printed by multi-material fused deposition modeling (FDM). Nine design variables span strut diameter and length, tension-element cross-section, strut count, connectivity, tiling, and FDM processing (nozzle temperature, print speed). Candidates are drop-tested across orientations; peak transmitted acceleration, specific energy absorption, and cross-orientation variation update a noise-aware Gaussian-process surrogate selecting the next batch. The campaign comprises 25 batches of four designs (100 experiments), targeting energy absorption exceeding 0.34 J/cm³ (matched-density FDM TPU honeycombs; Bates et al., 2016) with minimal orientation-dependence of peak acceleration. This terrestrial demonstrator centers the optimization framework; future work targets flight-relevant materials. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Additive Manufacturing, Machine Learning, Mechanical Properties |