Exploring the material properties of small scale folded structures

make robotics more readily available to the average person. Although designs for a number of successful printable robots have already been produced, there has been little formal exploration into the materials properties of these structures. Three point bending tests were performed on beams made of the materials and cross-sectional geometries of current designs to determine the bending stiffness of the printable beams currently found in printable robots, particularly the printable quad-rotor frame. As expected the composite acrylic and PEEK triangular beam had the highest bending stiffness El at 4.15 ± 1.67 N*m2. The lowest El was the triangular PEEK beam in its weak configuration at 0.02 ± 0.005 N*m2. 3D printed ABS beams had an unreliable result, with El in the range of 11.7 ± 8.05 N*m2. Overall our experimentally calculated values for El were generally consistent with the theoretically calculated values, providing useful information to inform future design choices and understanding the limitations of printable robot structures.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Uberti, Megan E

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniela Rus.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/83750

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/83750