3D printing of shape changing polymer structures: Design and characterization of materials

Additive manufacturing (AM) gives engineers unprecedented design and material freedom, providing the ability to 3D print polymer structures that can change shape. Many of these Shape Memory Polymer (SMP) structures require multi-material composites, and different programmed shapes can be achieved by designing and engineering these composites to fold and unfold at different rates. To enable SMP applications involving shape-changing geometries, it is important to have an understanding of the relationships between intermediate shapes and the initial and final designed shapes. To accomplish this, we investigated readily available 3D printable polymer materials and their thermo-mechanical characteristics to create multi-member structures. This paper demonstrates a way to generate different temporary geometric profiles on a single 3D printed shape with the same material. This paper also includes insights from thermo-mechanical analysis of the materials to help create multi-member shape-changing geometries using 3D printing.