Experimental Comparison of the Energy Absorption Properties of Different Cellular Materials

ABSTRACT Energy absorption under compressive load is a key criterion for the use of cellular materials in lightweight construction, protection, and damping applications. The choice of microstructure is essential, as it significantly influences the deformation behavior. For this reason, three structural classes of open‐celled materials are compared with each other. While open‐cell foam structures are characterized by a stochastically distributed cell geometry consisting of nodes and ligaments, beam‐based lattice structures are composed of regularly arranged unit cells. In contrast to both architectures, triply periodic minimal surface structures (TPMS) do not contain discrete nodes; they are formed by continuous, smooth, and periodic surfaces. To enable an objective comparison, open‐cell foams, TPMS, and conventional beam‐based lattice structures with identical relative density are produced using 3D printing and then experimentally examined under pressure loading. The differences in the resulting load‐deformation curves are presented in detail.