AccScience Publishing / ESAM / Volume 1 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/esam.8554
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Superior mechanical properties of interpenetrating phase composites integrating 3D-printed metal microlattice and infiltrating epoxy

Zhonggang Wang1,2,3 ,  Junjie Deng1,2,3 ,  Xinxin Wang1,2,3* ,  Kai Wei4
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1 School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
2 Key Laboratory of Traffic Safety on Track, Ministry of Education, Changsha, Hunan, China
3 The State Key Laboratory of Heavy-Duty and Express High-Power Electric Locomotive, Changsha, Hunan, China
4 State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China
ESAM 2025, 1(1), 8554 https://doi.org/10.36922/esam.8554
Submitted: 15 January 2025 | Revised: 7 March 2025 | Accepted: 10 March 2025 | Published: 20 March 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

The synergistic optimization of strength and toughness remains a critical challenge for mechanical metamaterials. To address this, this study aimed to investigate the interpenetrating phase composite (IPC) integrating metal-enhanced phase and epoxy-infiltrated phase with the hope to achieve superior strength-toughness properties. Truss microlattices and IPC specimens with conventional, reinforced, and hierarchical architectures were fabricated using selective laser melting and epoxy infiltration techniques. Experimental results show that the IPC metamaterials exhibited progressive large-deformation collapse sequences, mitigating the catastrophic collapse observed in pure truss microlattices. The IPCs demonstrated a synergistic enhancement (1 + 1 >2), with compressive strength exceeding the linear summation of constituent phases by up to 47.93% and specific energy absorption improved by 153.54% compared to pure truss microlattices. These improvements stem from interfacial interactions between the metal and epoxy phases, which enhance compressive strength during initial deformation, and achieve mutual crushing-supporting mechanism that promotes stable deformation in later stages. This study highlights significant performance enhancements in IPCs and offers insights into designing high strength-toughness metamaterials.

Keywords
Lattice metamaterials
Interpenetrating phase composite
Compressive strength
Energy absorption
Additive manufacturing
Funding
This work was financially supported by the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province (2023RC1011) and the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2023JJ10074). The authors would like to express their gratitude for these financial supports.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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