Experimental investigation of crest-to-crest wave spring and new lattice structure with enhanced load bearing capacity

Instead of foam, 3D-printed lattice structure gives full design freedom to achieve the required mechanical property. The wave springs are like a lattice structure which has enhanced characteristics like load bearing capacity, stiffness and energy absorption, energy release characteristics, etc. Wave spring may be helpful in the application of smooth landing of drones, robotic structures and vibration isolators. Using the additive manufacturing, the overlapped lattice structures without overlapped lattice structures and the overlapped wave spring are fabricated. For the lattice structure, calculation of the energy absorption characteristics is key to evaluate the result of different lattice structures. The present work is focused on the load bearing capacity, stiffness and energy loss in percentage of the overlapped wave spring and the energy absorbed characteristics of overlapped and without overlapped lattice structure. The load bearing capacity of overlapped wave spring and compressive properties of different lattice structures are obtained through universal testing machine. The result shows that the load bearing capacity of overlapped crest-to-crest wave spring for the first cycle is 386.237 N. Comparing the lattice structure, the overlapped crest-to-crest wave spring 10 which has the highest plateau stress value of 3.545 MPa is due to overlapped structure and pin arrangement over the circumferential surface. At end, the optimum lattice structure for energy absorption applications is identified.