Parallel Buckling and 3d Printing (Support Your Neighbors)

This presentation describes the exploitation of additive manufacturing to display interesting buckling behavior in slender elastic columns. A set of parallel columns were printed to relatively high precision, and then subjected to axial loading. The load-deflection behavior is influenced by the post-buckled mutual contact between adjacent columns. Given the capability of incorporating prescribed (but small) initial geometric imperfections (slight lack of straightness) using additive manufacturing it is feasible to seed post-bucking behavior, effectively tailoring stiffness. The sensitive nature of initial geometric imperfections and load eccentricity strongly influence post-buckled contact, load-carrying capacity, and, as the number of columns is increased, a statistically based evaluation of anticipated behavior is explored and ultimately found to be unrealistic. The presentation will conclude with a few other examples of the use of 3D-printing to illustrate nonlinear structural behavior.