AccScience Publishing / MSAM / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/MSAM026150027
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Biomimetic-enhanced metamaterial with improved compression energy absorption in three orthogonal directions

Zhonggang Wang1,2 ,  Lejiang Wang1,2 ,  Ziping Lei1,2 ,  Ruochao Zhao1,2 ,  Kai Liu1,2* ,  Xinxin Wang1,2,3*
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1 School of Traffic & Transportation Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
2 The State Key Laboratory of Heavy-Duty and Express High-Power Electric Locomotive, Changsha, Hunan, China
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
MSAM, 026150027 https://doi.org/10.36922/MSAM026150027
Received: 7 April 2026 | Revised: 14 May 2026 | Accepted: 22 May 2026 | Published online: 19 June 2026
© 2026 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

Achieving a balanced enhancement of mechanical properties across different loading directions remains a fundamental challenge in the design of advanced cellular structures. In this study, a novel multi-biomimetic design strategy is proposed by integrating three biomimetic designs: honeycomb arrays, tortoise shell microarchitecture, and the skeletal framework of deep-sea glass sponges. This hybrid design approach reinforces both edges and nodes, enabling superior mechanical response under multi-directional compressive loading. Specimens were fabricated via selective laser melting using 6061 aluminum alloy, and the mechanical characterizations were performed through quasi-static compression experiments and finite element analysis. Relative to conventional honeycombs, biomimetic-enhanced structures demonstrated a 15.37% improvement in specific energy absorption (SEA) under out-of-plane compression, with a more pronounced enhancement of up to 65.23% under in-plane compression. This performance improvement is attributed to the increased vertically oriented members along the loading axis. The biomimetic-enhanced structures exhibit a multi-zone distributed deformation mode while sustaining progressive global collapse, yielding a more homogeneous stress distribution and prolonged energy dissipation plateau. The data-driven parametric analysis was conducted to quantify the mapping relationships between key geometric parameters and critical crashworthiness indicators. This enabled the identification of optimized structural configurations with maximized SEA. The proposed multi-biomimetic framework offers broad applicability in impact protection engineering.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Mechanical metamaterial
Bio-inspired design
Compression performance
Energy absorption
Deformation mechanism
Funding
This work was financially supported the Science and Technology Program of Hunan Province (2025JK2067).
Conflict of interest
Xinxin Wang serves as Deputy Associate Editor of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing, Electronic ISSN: 2810-9635 Published by AccScience Publishing
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