A new article published in Polymers describe 3D printing structures inspired on a well known biomimetic structure, the honeycomb, generating a range of hexagonal structures with starfish-shaped reinforcements, printing them in a range of different thicknesses and sizes .
One of the most frequently bioinspired structures is the honeycomb due to their ability to absorb impact and manage compression forces while using minimum weight. Thanks to this, they have been employed in industries such as automobile, railway and satellites. Some advancements in additive manufacturing, specially in a technology called fused deposition modeling (FDM), have allowed the addition of shapes to improve performance. In this case, engineers printed 3D honeycomb structures with starfish shaped reinforcements with different thickness and sizes. The study found that they exhibited higher peak load capacities and that the smallest wall thickness have the best compression behavior. These findings suggest that reinforced structures could be important to imrove safety and cruch resistance for different applications such as trasport.
In this case , inspiration from two different organisms has been used to produce a biomimicry enhanced structure.
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