3D-Printing Damage-Tolerant Architected Metallic Materials with Shape Recoverability via Special Deformation Design of Constituent Material

Architected metallic materials generally suffer from a serious engineering problem of mechanical instability manifested as the emergence of localized deformation bands and collapse of strength. They usually cannot exhibit satisfactory shape recoverability due to the little recoverable strain of metallic constituent material. After yielding, the metallic constituent material usually exhibits a continuous low strain-hardening capacity, giving the local yielded regions of architecture low load resistance and easily developing into excessive deformation bands, accompanied by the collapse of strength. Here, a novel constituent material deformation design strategy has been skillfully proposed, where the low load resistance of yielded regions of the architecture can be effectively compensated by the significant self-strengthening behavior of constituent material, thus avoiding the formation of localized deformation bands and collapse of strength. To substantiate this strategy, shape-memory alloys (SMAs) are considered as suitable constituent materials for possessing both self-strengthening behavior and shape-recovery function. A 3D-printing technique was adopted to prepare various NiTi SMA architected materials with different geometric structures. It is demonstrated that all of these architected metallic materials can be stably and uniformly compressed by up to 80% without the formation of localized bands, collapse of strength, and structural failure, exhibiting ultrahigh damage tolerance. Furthermore, these SMA architected materials can display more than 98% shape recovery even after 80% deformation and excellent cycle stability during 15 cycles. This work exploits the amazing impact of constituent materials on constructing supernormal properties of architected materials and will open new avenues for developing high-performance architected metallic materials.