Xiaofei Cao

Wuhan University of Technology | WHUT · Department of Engineering Structure and Mechanics

Additive manufacturing (AM) routes have brought abundant geometric defects into as-fabricated lattice materials. Researchers take it for granted that any defects in lattice struts would decrease the mechanical properties of lattice structures, which has also been a rule followed by all engineering designers. In this paper, novel design strategies o...

An improved star-shaped honeycomb (ISSH) is a kind of honeycomb structure with excellent performance. The main objective of this study was to provide some ideas for the optimization of the ISSH structure in ships. As a result, 2D-ISSH specimens were fabricated using 3D printing technology, and a quasistatic compression test was carried out to inves...

Mechanical Metamaterials (MMs) are artificially designed structures with extraordinary properties that are dependent on micro architectures and spatial tessellations of unit cells, rather than constitutive compositions. They have demonstrated promising and attractive application potentials in practical engineering. Recently, how to rationally desig...

To investigate the effect of nodal configuration on the mechanical properties of hexachiral honeycombs, three specimens, namely, a standard honeycomb, a thickened-node honeycomb, and a filled-node honeycomb, were prepared using 3D-printing technology. Several quasi-static compression tests were performed, which revealed that nodal reinforcement can...

Metallic additive manufacturing process parameters, such as inclination angle and minimum radius, impose constraints on the printable lattice cell configurations in complex components. As a result, their mechanical properties are usually lower than their design values. Meanwhile, due to unavoidable process constraints (e.g., additional support stru...

To further improve the low-frequency broadband sound absorption capability of the underwater anechoic layer (UAL) on the surface of marine equipment, a novel sound absorption structure with cavities (NSSC) is designed by adding resonators and honeycombs to the traditional sound absorption structure with cavities (SSC). Based on the principle of she...

Truss-lattices have wide application prospects in various important fields owing to their superior mechanical properties and energy absorption characteristics. In this paper, two typical truss-lattice materials (i.e. bending-dominated body-centred cubic (BCC) and stretch-dominated Octet architectures) were designed with enhanced mechanical properti...

Nature provides a reference paradigm for customized mechanical properties and deformation characteristics of chiral structures, such as the hierarchical design strategy. Generally, the hierarchical chiral structures (HCS) have better compression performance and fracture resistance than the traditional first-order chiral structures (FCS). Despite so...

Compared with the traditional hexagonal honeycombs with positive Poisson's ratio, chiral metastructures have negative Poisson's ratio property, elevated transverse shear modulus and enhanced impact energy absorption performance, etc. In this study, the in-plane dynamic mechanical behaviors of ordinary anti-tetra-chiral honeycombs (ATH) consisting o...

Manufacturing plays an important role in the properties of composites, which may lead to two types of uncertainties: (1) carbon fiber manufacturing deviations, such as the bean-shaped PAN carbon fibers, the lognormal-distributed fiber radius, etc. (2) composites manufacturing deviations, such as the inter-fiber voids and matrix voids. Although seve...

Active mechanical metamaterials (AMMs) (or smart mechanical metamaterials) that combine the configurations of mechanical metamaterials and the active control of stimuli-responsive materials have been widely investigated in recent decades. The elaborate artificial microstructures of mechanical metamaterials and the stimulus response characteristics...

Underwater explosion (UNDEX) can cause severe damage to hull structure, equipment and human. In this paper, the effect of UNDEX load, including shock wave and bubble pulsation, on seated human response was investigated. The incident pressure of non-contact UNDEX was calculated. A lumped parameter interaction model of the ship structure (single-deck...

Inspired by the self-assembly process of biological macromolecules, MnL2n cage-lattices with distinct structural characteristics were proposed. The five cage-lattices of MnL2n family (i.e. M6L12, M12L24, M24L48, M30L60, M60L120) had huge hollow volume and additive manufacturability. The elastic properties and large strain response of the MnL2n cage...

Projection micro-stereolithography (PμSL) technique has been demonstrated effective in fabricating the micro lattices. However, the complex fabrication process would inevitably yield stochastic geometric defects within the target structure. In this paper, compressive mechanical properties and deformation modes of the micro gyroid cylinder shell str...

As an interesting energy-absorbing structure, auxetic reentrant honeycomb has attracted much attention in recent decades. Furthermore, due to the adjustable design in the configuration of the graded auxetic reentrant honeycomb (GARH), its mechanical performances were of greater designability and controllability. In this manuscript, compressive prop...

Metallic lattice structures have been widely utilized in different fields such as automobile, aerospace and so on, owing to their superior mechanical properties and energy absorption characteristics. In this paper, the enhanced dynamic mechanical properties of the modified rhombic dodecahedron (RD) lattice structures were investigated systematicall...

This paper presents a combination of experimental and numerical investigations on the dynamic response of scaling cabin structures under internal blast loading. The purpose of this study is to modify the similar relationship between the scaled-down model and the prototype of the cabin structures under internal blast loading. According to the Hopkin...

Lattice materials at micro scale with extraordinary stiffness and strength have demonstrated promising industrial application potentials in aerospace, transport, automotive, biomedical and other sections. However, the complex fabrication process at micro scale will inevitably induce stochastic geometric defects within as-fabricated lattice material...

Synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-computed tomography (SR-μCT) is a robust non-destructive 3D imaging technique that has been widely used to characterize defects in advanced materials and structures, which demonstrates great advantages for defects characterizations and microstructures evolution process investigations of mechanical metamaterials at...

Metamaterials/Phononic crystals are used to control the propagation of elastic waves/sound waves, and can be used in fields such as vibration isolation, noise reduction, stealth, focusing, and acoustic wave devices. The realization of real-time, flexible and active adjustable control of elastic waves by mechanical reconstruction of metamaterials is...

The near-field underwater explosion poses a great threaten to marine ships by introducing both local and overall damage on their hull structures. In this paper, a series of near-field underwater explosion experiments were carried out on the mimic steel hull structures to investigate the effects of the standoff distance on their dynamic behavior. Sp...

In this paper, Gyroid lattice cylindrical shell (LCS) specimens were designed by a newly proposed mapping methodology and were fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) technology. Their energy absorption and deformation modes were investigated through quasi-static compression tests. A finite element model (FEM) was proposed, which was validated...