Enhanced Low-Velocity Impact Resistance of Helicoidal Composites by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)

Bioinspired composites, capable of tailoring mechanical properties by the strategy of making full use of their advantages and bypassing their drawbacks, are vital for numerous engineering applications such as lightweight ultrahigh-strength, enhanced toughness, improved low-/high- velocity impact resistance, wave filtering, and energy harvesting. Helicoidal composites are examples of them. However, how to optimize the geometric structure to maximize the low-velocity impact resistance of helicoidal composites has been ignored, which is vital to the lightweight and high strength for aerospace, defense, ship, bridge, dam, vessel, and textile industries. Here, we combined experiments and numerical simulations to report the dynamic response of helicoidal composites subjected under low-velocity impact (0-10 m/s). Our helicoidal structures, inspired by the Stomatopod Dactyl club, are fabricated using polylactic acid (PLA) by FFF in a single-phase way. The helicoidal strategy aims to exploit, to a maximum extent, the axial tensile strength of filaments and simultaneously make up the shortage of inter-filament contact strength. We demonstrate experimentally that the low-velocity impact resistance has been enhanced efficiently as the helicoidal angle varies, and that the 15° helicoidal plate is better than others, which has also been confirmed by the numerical simulations. The findings reported here provide a new routine to design composites systems with enhanced impact resistance, offering a method to improve impact performance and expand the application of 3D printing.