Development Of Advanced Sandwich Core Topologies Using Fused Deposition Modeling And Electroforming Processes

New weight efficient materials are needed to enhance the performance of vehicle systems allowing increased speed, maneuverability and fuel economy. This work leveraged a multi-length-scale composite approach combined with hybrid material methodology to create new state-of-the-art additive manufactured sandwich core material. The goal of the research was to generate a new material to expands material space for strength versus density. Fused-Deposition-Modeling (FDM) was used to remove geometric manufacturing constraints, and electrodepositing was used to generate a high specific-strength, bio-inspired hybrid material.;Microtension samples (3mm x 1mm with 250mum x 250mum gage) were used to investigate the electrodeposited coatings in the transverse (TD) and growth (GD) directions. Three bath chemistries were tested: copper, traditional nickel sulfamate (TNS) nickel, and nickel deposited with a platinum anode (NDPA). NDPA shows tensile strength exceeding 1600 MPa, significantly beyond the literature reported values of 60MPa. This strengthening was linked to grain size refinement into the sub-30nm range, in addition to grain texture refinement resulting in only 17% of the slip systems for nickel being active. Anisotropy was observed in nickel deposits, which was linked to texture evolution inside of the coating. Microsample testing guided the selection of 15mum layer of copper deposition followed by a 250 mum NDPA layer.;Classical formulas for structural collapse were used to guide an experimental parametric study to establish a weight/volume efficient strut topology. Length, diameter and thickness were all investigated to determine the optimal column topology. The most optimal topology exists when Eulerian buckling, shell micro buckling and yielding failure modes all exist in a single geometric topology.;Three macro-scale sandwich topologies (pyramidal, tetrahedral, and strut-reinforced-tetrahedral (SRT) were investigated with respect to strength-per-unit-weight. The topologies were optimized across length scales using texture on the nano-scale microsamples on the micro-scale, and the parametric column study on the meso-scale. The results showed that additive manufacturing as a viable method for removing geometric constraints observed by other manufacturing methods. The SRT was the most optimized topology showing the highest strength-per-unit-weight. The final topology sits in a best-of-both areas of material space exceeding the commercially available honeycombs strength per relative density by 1670%.