Composite materials play an important role in various engineering applications including aerospace industry. This is due to the attractive mechanical properties and strength-to-weight ratio of composite materials. Moreover, these properties can be tailored by designing the microstructural arrangements and composition of the heterogeneous materials. Recent development in the materials fabrication, in particular multimaterial 3D printing technologies already allow realization of material designs at different length-scales.
In this study, we specifically focus on the mechanical properties of composite materials produced through the UV assisted multimaterial 3D printing. In particular, we focus on the influence of the interphases between different phases on the mechanical performance of the 3D printed composites. We find that while the interphase phenomenon barely influence the effective mechanical properties of the composite, it significantly influence the stability of the material, as such the critical strain and associated critical wavelength of elastic instabilities change.
To elucidate the underlining phenomenon, we employ the finite element based numerical analysis, and perform the rigorous Bloch-Floquet instability analysis, while accounting for the interphases. The numerically obtained critical strains and wavelengths are compared with the experimental results on 3D printed laminates. We observe a good qualitative agreement between the experimental and numerical results.
