Computational Materials Science 46 (2009) 7382

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Computational Materials Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/commatsci

Effects of imperfections on the mechanical behavior of a wire-woven bulk Kagome cellular metal under compression
Sangil Hyun a, Ji-Eun Choi b, Ki-Ju Kang c,*
a

Simulation Center, Korea Inst. of Ceramic Eng. and Tech., Seoul 153-801, South Korea Automobile Research Center, Chonnam National University, Kwangju 500-757, South Korea c School of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Chonnam National University, 300 Yongbongdong Bukku, Kwangju 500-757, South Korea
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
A new cellular metallic structure known as wire-woven bulk Kagome (WBK) has been recently introduced. The fabrication of WBK is done by assembling metal wires in six directions and being brazed at all crossing points. Namely, wires that are naturally easy to handle and have high strength with least defects are used as the raw material to fabricate a structure similar to the Kagome truss. Its mechanical strength and energy absorption capability has been shown to be superior to previously developed cellular metals. The effect of imperfections on the performance of WBK, however, has never been explored either numerically or experimentally. In order to investigate the mechanical characteristics of the WBK under compression, a new hierarchical simulation method was proposed in this paper. First, the behavior of the bulk WBK composed of innite number of cells in perfectly uniform structure was simulated by nite element analysis conducted on a unit cell under periodic boundary conditions. Second, the equivalent moduli of single truss obtained from the nite element analysis were utilized in the network analysis to examine the effects of geometry and material property imperfections. The imperfections introduced in statistical manner were added on perfect WBK lattice structures, and numerical results of the compressive strength and its sensitivity on the defects were compared with experimental results. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 5 January 2009 Accepted 5 February 2009 Available online 19 March 2009 PACS: 62.20.x 68.55.Ln 81.17.d Keywords: Cellular metal Kagome truss Imperfections PBC (periodic boundary condition) Network analysis WBK (wire-woven bulk Kagome)

1. Introduction Cellular metals are well-known for their high mechanical strength and stiffness with low weight advantage [1]. Because they have high ratio of surface area to volume, they are used as medium for heat exchanger or uid storage as well [1,2]. The rst commercialized cellular metal is metal foam, whose engineering applications are however limited due to its high manufacturing cost and relatively low mechanical strength caused by the random cell geometry. On the other hand, periodic cellular metals (PCM) with uniform cell geometry can enhance mechanical characteristics signicantly. Among three types of PCM such as prismatic, shell, and truss, the truss-type of PCM with open cell structure is considered to possess multi-functional feature. Pyramidal [3,4], octet [57], and Kagome [810] trusses are typical truss-type PCMs proposed to date. The Kagome truss PCM is especially known to show high resistance against plastic buckling, high plastic deformation energy, and low anisotropy. To utilize the superior mechanical performance of truss-type PCMs in various industrial applications, there have been a lot of
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 62 530 1688; fax: +82 62 530 1689. E-mail address: kjkang@chonnam.ac.kr (K.-J. Kang). 0927-0256/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.commatsci.2009.02.007

manufacturing processes suggested for mass production. However, the suggested methods of PCMs still have lack of economic merit for the high fabrication cost. Kang and his colleagues [11,12] recently introduced a new fabrication approach by using metallic wires. The wire-woven bulk Kagome (WBK) based on the Kagome lattice structure [8,10] was fabricated by three-dimensionally weaving helical metallic wires in six directions. The assembled wires were xed by brazing at all the crossing points. Even though the structure was composed of wavy wires, compression tests [12,13] and three point bending test [14] showed that the strengths are comparable to those of the ideal Kagome truss structure with straight struts. The studies also reported that, even after reaching the peak point, it did not show unstable fracture phenomenon, but rather, the descending rate of its strength was slow enough to absorb a large amount of mechanical energy. Thus, WBK is expected to be mass-produced at a low price by simply assembling continuous wires. Furthermore, its relatively low anisotropy may enable the bulk WBK to be machined like solid metal regardless of orientation. A wide range of the diameter of wires from nano-meters to meters can be used in the fabrication of the WBK potentially to be constructed in many different length scales. Since WBK is assembled with continuous wires, it is also advantageous to fabricate and utilize in a form of multi-layered bulk materials.

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The evaluation of the mechanical performance of the WBK is though not simple due to the intrinsic complex geometry and possible imperfections. Thus, numerical simulation techniques need to be introduced for the analysis on the bulk WBK structures. For the numerical evaluation, a hierarchical simulation method was suggested in this paper to explore the mechanical behavior of the WBK under compressive load. In the rst step, nite element analysis was performed to examine the elastic and plastic behavior of a single unit cell of WBK. The constraints of periodic boundary condition were imposed to avoid the boundary effects. The size effect of the brazed joints existing in the real WBK was also investigated. In the second step, a network analysis for non-linear truss property was introduced to investigate the mechanical performance of large WBK models. The equivalent moduli of single truss from the nite element analysis on unit cell were utilized in the network analysis to address the inuence of imperfections on the mechanical strength. The imperfections were introduced in the form of geometry imperfections and material property imperfections and the distribution functions of the imperfections were assumed Gaussian distributions. The numerical simulations were performed to address the imperfection effects on the mechanical strengths of the WBK and compared with available experimental results. 2. Simulation methods 2.1. Finite element analysis for single unit cells 2.1.1. Simulation model of WBK unit cell Fig. 1 shows the congurations of WBK and its unit cell introduced by Kang and Lee [11]. A uniform unit cell (b) and (c) is shown to repeat in three-dimensional space to construct the bulk structure (d). The unit cell (c) consists of one octahedron-like structure in the middle and the two tetrahedron-like structures at the both ends. The WBK specimen in the previous work by Lee et al. [12] was selected for the simulation model. The specimen was assembled with SUS304 stainless steel helical wires. Fig. 2 shows the sample between compression platens and the helical wires with pitch of 16.2 mm and helical radius of 0.46 mm. The diameter of the wire and the interval between the wire crossings were d = 0.78 mm and a = 8.1 mm, respectively.

Fig. 2. (a) A WBK sample mounted between compression platens. (b) Helix wires assembled into the WBK sample.

Finite element method was employed to investigate the mechanical performance of the bulk WBK, which is consisted of many identical unit cells. By imposing periodic boundary conditions, the analysis on the bulk WBK was done only on the single unit cell. The unit cell was modeled by using a commercial graphics code, 3-D PATRAN 2005 as shown in Fig. 3. The nite element analysis was performed by using ABAQUS version 6.5. The cross section of the wire was modeled by 20 quadratic brick elements (C3D20 element of ABAQUS) and the ller metal brazed at the cross points (see the gure) was modeled by 5802 quadratic tetrahedron elements (C3D10 element of ABAQUS). A variety of different heights of the ller metal from 0 to 6 mm was used to investigate the size effect of the brazed part (see Fig. 4). The unit cell model for the analysis was composed of 145,992 elements and 331,174 nodes in total. The material properties for the simulation were given by the tensile test by Lee et al. [12]. The elastic modulus of the wire and the ller metals was E = 170 GPa, the yield stress was ry = 184 MPa, and the Poissons ratio was assumed to be m = 0.3. The J2-incremental theory of plasticity was applied.

Fig. 1. Congurations of (a) two-dimensional Kagome truss woven by three directional wires, in which the triangles surrounded by the solid line and the parallelogram surrounded by the dashed line are, respectively, converted into (b) tetrahedrons and (c) parallelepiped in (d) the three-dimensional Kagome truss woven by six directional wires (WBK).

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Fig. 3. Finite element model of the WBK unit cell with enlarged image of a brazed joint in the SUS304 stainless steel WBK specimen.

Fig. 4. Finite element models near brazed joints with various heights; (a) the zero height by multi point constraint (MPC), (b) 2 mm, (c) 4 mm, and (d) 6 mm heights.

2.1.2. Periodic boundary conditions When a structure consisting of many uniform cells like WBK is to be analyzed, numerical analysis for the whole structural system can be severely inefcient or even impossible. An alternative way is to use the periodicity of the structure subject to periodic boundary conditions. Under the constraints, all the unit cells in the bulk sample are assumed to deform uniformly under the external deformation. Then, a single unit cell can represent the mechanical performance of the bulk sample. Mills [15] successfully simulated large compressive deformations of an open cell foam by applying the three-dimensional periodic boundary conditions to a representative unit cell with multi point constraints (MPC) available in the commercial software of ABAQUS. In the macroscopic viewpoint, WBK can be regarded as a bulk material. If a sample of WBK is composed of innite number of unit cells, the effect of the outer surfaces on the bulk material properties can be ignored and the mechanical behavior can be estimated by analyzing the inner material. Suppose that all the cells in the inner material deform uniformly under the external force acting on the bulk sample. The deformation of the cells should be compatible to each other. Namely, the deformed shape of a unit cell must be matched with those of the neighbors. To apply the periodic boundary conditions by MPC, a reference nodal point is dened at an arbitrary position around the unit cell model (see Fig. 3). The constraint equations of the unit cells for the periodic boundary conditions are represented by

in i-th orientation are displaced with constant vectors of ~i C i . Then u a displacement eld, ~i C i is applied on the reference point Ci. For u example, if a normal load is applied in z-axis, the displacement eld ~3 C 3 u^ is applied on the reference point C3. All the other disz u placement vectors on the reference points are zeroes, i.e., ~1 C 1 ~2 C 2 . Fig. 5 shows the deformed shape of the original u u model in Fig. 3 under a compressive load. Note that the repeated pattern of the deformed unit cells is equivalent to the bulk WBK in Fig. 5b. The stressstrain curve of the single unit cell WBK was obtained as in Fig. 6. Experimental result of the specimen of a double layered WBK and theoretical prediction are also presented in the gure for comparison. The theoretical prediction is based upon the assumption of an ideal Kagome structure [12] in which the WBK is composed of straight struts with ball joint ends. Equivalent Youngs modulus and equivalent yield stress are expressed by

Ec

rc y

p  2 3 2 d pE ; 40 a p  2 2 d pr0 ; 8 a

2 3

where E and r0 are the Youngs modulus and the yield stress of the SUS304 wire, respectively. In the three stressstrain curves, the yield stresses or the maximum stresses agree fairly well with each other, which validates the approach with a unit cell under the periodic boundary condition. More detailed analysis on this result is given in Section 3.1. 2.1.3. Equivalent moduli of single strut of WBK To model the realistic non-linear property of a single strut in the WBK sample, the result of the nite element analysis on the unit cell of WBK was used. The loaddisplacement relation for the unit cell model under the periodic boundary condition was used to estimate the forcedisplacement relation of a single strut. It was asp sumed that the relation, P 6F, was valid between the externally applied compressive load, P, and the force applied to a single p strut in the unit cell, F, and that another relation, dP 10 6dF , was valid between displacement dP occurring at the 9 loading point due to P, and displacement dF occurring in the single strut due to F (see Appendix). And the forcedisplacement relation of the single strut, FdF, was estimated from PdP. In addition, to verify the boundary conditions at the brazed joint ends, we compared FdF estimated from PdP with the nite element results of a freestanding strut under compression (e = 13%) for two extreme boundary conditions (ball jointed and xed ends). Fig. 7a shows the initial conguration of the strut, and Fig. 7b and c show its deformed shapes under two extreme boundary conditions. For the given conditions, the forcedisplacement of single strut was

~ ~jji ~jji ui C i ; u u
~jji u
0 ~jji u

where and are the displacement vectors of two surfaces peri0 odic in i-th orientation (i = 1, 2, 3) and j and j denote the index of 0 nodes on the periodic surfaces (j, j = 1, 2, ..., n). The three periodic orientations (i = 1, 2, 3) in the current problem are corresponding to the direction of x, y, z-axis, respectively. The displacement vectors ~i C i are dened at the reference points Ci in the corresponding u 0 periodic orientation. Every pair of nodes denoted by j and j periodic

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Fig. 5. (a) Deformed shape of the WBK unit cell model with Mises effective stress distribution. (b) The deformed shape of the unit cell (a) is repeatedly copied and pasted to the neighbors in three-dimensional space to check its compatibility.

Fig. 6. Stressstrain responses of WBK under compression.

Fig. 7. Finite element models for a freestanding strut model taken off from WBK truss; (a) the initial shape, (b) the deformed shape under compression with ball jointed ends, (c) the shape with xed ends.

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Fig. 8. Force vs. displacement curves for various boundary conditions. The curve with open circles was estimated from the loaddisplacement relation for the unit cell model of WBK and the rests were obtained by the nite element analysis on the freestanding strut model for two different boundary conditions (ball jointed and xed ends). The (red) solid curve for the periodic boundary condition is tted by 6th order polynomial functions. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

determined and utilized to get the moduli for the next analysis on the bulk WBK of many cells. Fig. 8 shows the forcedisplacement curves for the three different conditions. Here, the curve with open circles was estimated from the loaddisplacement relation for the unit cell model of WBK, and the remaining curves were obtained for the freestanding strut models with two different boundary conditions (ball jointed and xed ends). Note that the result under periodic boundary condition lies between the two extreme joint conditions. The forcedisplacement curve for the periodic boundary conditions was considered to represent the material property of single truss in the real WBK. To cover the wide range of displacement in the forcedisplacement relation, we interpolated and extrapolated the curve (circles) by using 6th order polynomials in Eq. (4).

the network analysis. Because a usual nite element method is hard to apply for analyzing a complicate structure like the truss PCM, we employed its generic version. It has been widely employed in various numerical simulations on optimization, vibration, electrical, and thermal analysis [16,17]. In this study, we generated a reasonable size of truss models for the bulk wire-woven structures including many random defects. To capture the non-linear characteristics of the real WBK truss, each truss was modeled by non-linear response of forcedisplacement relation such as elasto-plasticity obtained by the nite element analysis on the single unit cell, as mentioned above. Fig. 9 shows a typical shape of the simulation model used in the network analysis. The network model consists of 10 unit cells both in planar directions (xy) and 3 unit cells in the normal direction (z). The number of nodes is 1300, and the number of truss elements is 3600. To remove the boundary effect on the planar deformation of the model under normal deformation, the periodic boundary conditions were applied in the xy directions. However, the periodicity was not imposed in the vertical direction. Thus, some boundary effect can be observed along the z-axis. Under the compressive load and the imposed periodic boundary conditions, the minimum energy congurations were determined by the rearrangement of nodal positions. The boundary conditions of each node were represented in different colors (available in online version; the green and blue dots represent nodes connected on the top and bottom face plates, respectively, whereas the red dots represent nodes in the middle).1 The compressive load was gradually increased slow enough to keep the system in quasi-static condition. To validate the computational scheme, the simulations were started with the perfect lattice model without any imperfection, and the result was compared with that by the nite element analysis performed on a single unit cell corresponding to the perfect (homogeneous) network model. Later the simulation scheme was applied on the models with realistic imperfections dened in the next section. 2.3. Statistical imperfections of geometry and material property To simulate realistic models, we added two types of imperfections on a perfect lattice model. One type was the geometry imperfection and the other type was the material property imperfection. Geometry imperfections refer to morphological defects generated by changing the alignment of the node positions (brazed joints in WBK) from the perfect lattice sites. On the other hand, material property imperfection depicts the inhomogeneous material property caused by the imperfect brazing parts or the irregular shapes of the truss elements. The distributions of both imperfections were dened in the form of Gaussian function. Inhomogeneous characteristics of the defect models were described by stochastically distributing the two imperfections in the perfect network model. The numerical results were compared with those of the nite element analysis on the unit cell and the experiment measurement. To introduce the geometry imperfections, the positions ~ of the x nodes between the top and bottom plates were translated by prescribed standard deviations Dg in Gaussian distributions (Fig. 10).

FdF

6 X i0

C i diF ;

where Ci are the tting coefcients. The ttings were done in three separated regions in the curve. The tted curves were used to model the non-linear characteristics of each strut in the network models. 2.2. Random network analysis for bulk WBK models The discrepancy in the stressstrain curves of the WBK sample between the nite element simulation and the experiment would be due to inhomogeneous geometrical defects existing in the wires and brazed joints possibly generated during the manufacturing process. To conduct nite element analysis on the bulk model may not be suitable because an extremely large model is required to treat the random defects with good statistics. Instead, we introduced the random network analysis which can effectively analyze large network systems of spring or truss. The network analysis is based on the minimum potential theory just like FEM. To analyze a regular network system such as truss structures or atomic lattice structures, a truss strut or its equivalent is modeled as a single element with non-linear physical quantity such as non-linear elastic material property. In fact, the nite element method stems from

~ ~0 a~g ; D x x

where a is the length of strut in the perfect lattice model (a = 8.1 mm). Fig. 11 shows the distribution of the normalized strut length (dr/a) for a model with geometric imperfections (before and after the compression). The distribution in a perfect lattice model is presented together for comparison; note that the perfect lattice model has a single peak at dr/a = 1 with zero width. The distribution

1 For interpretation of color in Figs. 9,11,14 and 15, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.

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Fig. 9. A random network model (side view) of WBK without any imperfection. The color scheme (online version) represents the boundary conditions at each node: free (red), blue (xed), and green (subject to normal compression). (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 10. A WBK network model with geometrical imperfections (Dg = 0.12) before deformation. The color scheme is same as Fig. 9. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 11. The distributions of normalized truss length for WBK network model under compression. A model with a geometrical imperfection (Dg = 0.037) shows Gaussian distributions of the truss lengths before and after the deformation.

Fig. 12. Force vs. displacement curves according to Eq. (4) with Gaussian defects (Dp). The gray region represents a possible distribution of the curves by the Gaussian defect (Dp = 0.1).

ation (Dp) of the Gaussian distribution function is prescribed and added to the reference curve for the perfect truss. before the deformation (red in the online version) shows a single peak at dr/a = 1 with a Gaussian width, and it is separated into two peaks (green in the online version) after the deformation. One peak at dr/a = 1 shows the unchanged strut length aligned in the planar directions, while a new peak near dr/a = 0.84 is due to the compressed struts under the deformation. To dene the second type of imperfections, we assume that some imperfect strut shapes (e.g. irregularly formed strut, inhomogeneous cross section) or defects in the brazed joints can be generated in the real WBK samples during the manufacturing process. It is then required to realistically model the inhomogeneous property of the individual strut and the joint. To this end, we added random variations on the force (F) vs. displacement (dF) curves depicting material property of truss as shown in Fig. 12. The standard devi-

FdF F 0 dF 1 Dp ;

where F0(dF) is the force acting on a strut in the perfect lattice model and is a function of displacement according to Eq. (4). For an example, Fig. 12 was given by the deviation Dp = 0.1. Note that, by adding the property random defects Dp on Eq. (6), the initial reference curve for the perfect truss model (solid line) can be reshaped in order to cover the wide gray area in the plot. 3. Results and discussions 3.1. The size effect of brazing in unit cell model Early mismatch of experimental result in the previous gure (Fig. 6) seems to be attributed to the imperfect contact between

S. Hyun et al. / Computational Materials Science 46 (2009) 7382 Table 1 Summary of material properties of WBK PCM under compression. Ec (MPa) Theory Experiments FEA with different brazed heights 583.7 300.36 282.4 421.0 483.1 493.2
a

79

rc (MPa) y

rc (MPa) max
0.98 0.93 0.57 0.99 1.0 1.07

MPC 2 mm 4 mm 6 mm
b

0.98 0.9 0.53 0.8 0.73 0.6

a b

0.2% offset yield stress. The same as observed in the specimen.

the specimen and compression platens, which often occurs in compression tests, especially when the contact area is large compared to the height. The stiffness, the equivalent Youngs modulus, measured by the unloading curve was substantially lower than that estimated by the theory, as shown in Table 1. This was because the waviness of the wires reduced the stiffness, while the theory

was based on the assumption of a structure composed of straight struts. Meanwhile, in Table 1, the measured stiffness was even lower than that estimated by the simulation. One of the reasons for the lowering of the stiffness is probably due to the imperfections existing in the real sample. As another possible cause for the discrepancy would be the inuence of the brazing size on the mechanical strength. It was not apparent how much the additional material for the brazing part can affect the stressstrain curves. Fig. 13a shows the stressstrain curves estimated for WBK models with the various brazed joints under compression, while Fig. 13b highlights the initial portion of the curves. Even if the initial behaviors in the elastic regime appeared signicantly sensitive on the brazed heights, the yield strengths and maximum stresses were nearly insensitive to the brazed heights, except for those with the zero height. However, in the post yield regime, the brazing size is shown to inuence substantially on the stress. Large brazing tends to delay the decrease of the stress after the yield point. In Table 1 the equivalent Youngs modulus, yield strength and maximum stress estimated by the simulation are summarized for the four different heights of brazing. 3.2. Effect of imperfections By conducting the network analysis on the defect models, the effect of imperfections was addressed for the bulk WBK. We rst evaluated the effect of geometry imperfections on the mechanical strength. Fig. 14 presents the network simulation results on the defect models under compressive load for a wide range of geometry imperfections (0 < Dg < 0.49) and compared with the nite element result for single unit cell. The perfect lattice model represented by solid line (blue in online) revealed slightly lower maximum strength than the nite element result, but the overall shape of the response was fairly similar. We suspect that the lower maximum strength for the network analysis is due to the boundary effect on the face plates. The top and bottom face plates in the WBK type sandwich panel were xed to be at in the network analysis, whereas bending struts can be generated in the unit cell deformed in periodic manner in the nite element method. The boundary conditions for the at sheets may drop the maximum strength because the unit cell subject to the periodic boundary conditions

Fig. 13. (a) Stressstrain responses of WBK under compression estimated by nite element analyses for the unit cell model with periodic boundary conditions and with various heights of brazing, (b) the same curves plotted with the smaller strain range to highlight the initial portion of the curves.

Fig. 14. Stress vs. strain curves for the WBK network model under compression. The perfect lattice model (no defect) shows relatively lower strength than the nite element simulation result. As the geometrical imperfection (Dg) increases, the curves become gradually lowered.

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generally reveals optimal performance by avoiding any boundary effect. We later examined the dependence of the strength on the material property imperfections. The imperfection levels were varied from Dp = 0 to 0.6 and the corresponding stressstrain curves were obtained for a wide range of compressive strain. Fig. 15 shows the stressstrain curves for the specied imperfection levels and the experimental measurement (pink in online). Note that the maximum stress (0.93 MPa) of the perfect lattice model is nearly same to the experimental result. But, the post yield response shows a slightly faster drop than the experimental result. It is noted that the stressstrain curves with various imperfection levels are almost unchanged until the imperfection level reaches Dp = 0.4. The sensitivity analysis was done on the imperfection levels over the maximum strength and Youngs modulus. In Fig. 16, the

Fig. 17. Variations of the peak stress for the geometry and material property imperfections.

Fig. 15. Stress vs. strain curves for WBK network models (perfect and with material imperfections). FEM result and experimental result are added for the comparison.

maximum stress (rmax) and Youngs modulus (E) are plotted as a function of the geometry imperfection level. Under the relatively low imperfection (Dg < 0.12), the maximum strength is, however, nearly insensitive to the geometry imperfection. As shown in gure, the Youngs modulus curve shows slightly higher dependence on the defect than the maximum strength curve. Fig. 17 presents the sensitivity curves of the maximum stress as a function of the levels of the two imperfections (Dg, Dp). As noted before in Fig. 16, the peak stress of the geometry imperfection model decreases gradually. But, the peak stress of the material imperfection model stays nearly unchanged up to a certain level (Dp $ 0.4), after which the peak stress suddenly drops to 60% of that of the perfect model. It implies that the sensitivity of the material property imperfection is lower than that of the geometry imperfection in the low index regime. 4. Concluding remarks In this study, two simulation methods were employed to characterize the mechanical performance of WBK under compressive load. First, under the assumption of perfectly uniform geometry and properties, the mechanical behavior of WBK consisting of innite number of cells was simulated by nite element analysis on a single unit cell under periodic boundary conditions. The analysis on the single unit cell was validated to be applied on the innite number of identical unit cells by checking the compatibility of the deformation. Also, the size effect of the brazed joint on the behavior of WBK was investigated. Secondly, network analysis was introduced to address the effect of imperfections on its mechanical behavior. Two types of feasible defects were dened to generate a realistic bulk WBK. One was the geometry imperfection and the other was the material property imperfection. By dening the two types of defects in mathematical expressions and stochastically distributing in the perfect network, inhomogeneous characteristics of realistic network structures were simulated. The following conclusions were obtained from the numerical simulations;

Fig. 16. Variation of elastic modulus, Ec, and peak stress, rc normalized by the max counterparts, Ec0 and rc0 , for the perfect lattice model as a function of the max geometrical imperfection (Dg).

(1) The nite element simulation on a unit cell under periodic boundary condition yielded geometrically compatible deformation of the unit cell, and the estimated stressstrain curve

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agreed fairly well with the experimental result. Therefore, the result of the analysis on a single unit cell under the periodic boundary condition can be regarded to represent the mechanical behavior of a bulk WBK composed of many cells. (2) Even though the elastic regime in the stressstrain curves such as the equivalent Youngs modulus was sensitively depending on the brazed joint height, the equivalent yield strengths and maximum stresses were nearly constant regardless of the brazed joint height, except for those with the zero. (3) The random network analysis using the non-linear property of single truss estimated from the nite element simulation on the unit cell gave reasonably good estimation of the stressstrain curve in comparison with the experimental measurement. (4) With the geometry imperfections, the maximum strength decreased gradually as the imperfection level increased. On the other hand, with the material property imperfections, the maximum strength stayed nearly unchanged up to a certain level (Dp $ 0.4) before it suddenly dropped. The WBK lattice structure was shown to be more sensitive to geometry imperfection (irregular truss lengths, positions of joints) up to a certain limit. In this study, only the normal compressive deformation has been considered. But, more loading conditions (e.g. tensile, shear) also need to be considered to explore the characteristics of the WBK for general applications as structural materials. In addition, the hierarchical simulation framework incorporating the nite element method and the network analysis was demonstrated useful

for further study in order to evaluate the multifunctional characteristics of the WBK lattice structure such as electrical, thermal and vibration properties. Acknowledgement This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) Grant funded by the Korea government (MOST) (R0A-2006-000-10249-0 and R01-2006-000-10349-0). Appendix Fig. A1 shows the two types of the unit cells which are repeated to compose a two-dimensional Kagome structure. Even though type A is a more general form of the unit cell consisted with regular polygons, type B is selected because the whole mechanical behavior of the Kagome structure, i.e. the compressive loaddeformation behavior, can be predicted without considering interference from the neighbors. Nevertheless, the mechanical behaviors of the two types of unit cells are expected to be identical. Fig. A2 shows the two types of the unit cells selectable in three-dimensional Kagome structure. The same reason as the above makes the type (b) to be selected for the following analytic solution. Fig. A3 shows the lower regular tetrahedron truss of type (b). The p F equilibrium of forces leads to the relations P 6F and G 3. Consequently, the elastic energy can be express as

Fig. A1. Two types of unit cells of two-dimensional Kagome truss.

Fig. A3. Conguration of the lower regular tetrahedron truss of type B of Fig. A2 under compression, and forces acting on the truss.

Fig. A2. Conguration of two types of unit cells of three-dimensional ideal Kagome truss; (a) type A, (b) type B.

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U 3U F 3U G

5P2 ; 18k

A1

where the stiffness of the truss element k can be expressed as Ed2 k p4a . The displacement generated in the whole unit cell can be expressed as

dP 2

5P 40aP : 9k 9pEd2

A2

The deformation of one unit cell can be expressed as

dF

F 4aF : k pEd2

A3

From P

p 6F, the relation between dF and dP can be given by

dF

9dp p : 10 6

A4

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