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TenseFlatables: 3D Printed Tensegrity-Assisted Inflatable Structures

TenseFlatables have the potential to significantly outperform conventional inflatables in their form and functionality. The ability to create lightweight structures reliant on pressurized air can enable the design of novel multifunctional technologies for use as automotive, aircraft, and spacecraft components that help reduce fuel consumption. Their deploy-and-stow ability makes them ideal for aerospace and hypersonic deployable supports and decelerators. Further, their advanced functionality can be harnessed to improve the efficacy of biomedical procedures such as Balloon Kyphoplasty, Vertebroplasty, Rectum Balloon Implant, and to replace the subacromial balloon spacers currently used during rotator cuff repair surgery. Further, modified TenseFlatables, where air is replaced by a hydrogel that swells in reaction to stomach juices, are well suited for application as inflatable pills for cancer and infection monitoring.

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Manufacturing & Prototyping Materials

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 next up we have tense flatables 3D printed tense gritty assisted inflatable structures for manufacturing and materials category please welcome William Johnston and Dr bisham [Applause] Sharma thank you all right thank you everyone and good afternoon I'm William Johnston and I'm a PhD student and an NSF graduate

    00:00:26 research fellow at Michigan Technological University and I'm bisham Sharma I an associate professor at Michigan Tech University and also his PhD adviser our topic today is going to be tense flatables Advanced inflatables for a sustainable future so the story of humanity basically is our desire our need to shape our environment right we

    00:00:47 started with trying to replicate our cave dwellings with the materials at hand started construction using the techniques that we had as we learned more we learned more about manufacturing we learned more about materials we learned more techniques more structural mechanics we managed to make more complicated structures colosium more complex large also beautiful churches

    00:01:06 for example our initial Focus was mostly on making larger things and more complicated things as we learned more about new materials new manufacturing methods we were able to come up with even more complicated structures right but over the last few years or rather the last century our Focus has changed more from complexity and largess to more complexity but more lightweightness

    00:01:29 right that's two main reasons for that the first reason is the developments in aerospace engineering the things that we want to fly they need to be lightweight so lightweightness is kind of important for that and the other thing is climate change right so climate change is f focusing us a lot more on making things light weight we need things to be lighter up so that they consume lesser

    00:01:50 amount of fuel right so um our Focus has moved on more towards complexity and making things lighter uh but from any reports if you pick up a newspaper but you know that whatever we are doing right now it's not really working as well as we would hope for a more sustainable future we need more creative ideas we need more radical Solutions right so one creative idea one radical

    00:02:11 solution which we came up with was how about we just get rid of all the solid part can we just have a structure which has the shape that we desire and which also retains the mechanical performance that we are requiring right so basically what I'm describing is an inflatable material right so in an inflatable you have a thin membrane you use the membrane to achieve the shape that you

    00:02:32 want you fill the membrane up keep it airtight and the pressurized air inside it that's going to be the load bearing component so basically you're replacing the solid with the air and you're retaining the shape using the inflatable material right so if Inflatables are so great they are so lightweight why don't we really use them for engineering

    00:02:52 applications most of the applications for inflatables right now are really entertainment purposes right for parades we have have a big parade later on this month outside right so we'll see a lot of Inflatables out there um for entertainment applications for children's birthday parties balloons those kind of things that's what we use inflatables for right now not really for

    00:03:12 engineering right there are two main reasons for that the first reason is that it's very difficult to get dimensionally tolerant inflatable shapes right the process itself involves you take 2D shapes you cut them and then you glue them together and then you inflate the whole thing that kind of makes it very difficult to to achieve dimensional tolerance and very Precision right so

    00:03:33 engineering is all about Precision if you can't have precise structures you can't really use them for critical load bearing applications and inte applications uh the other part is it's surprisingly difficult to actually manufacture Inflatables you need to start from the 3D shape that you want work backwards which is called the form finding process and you identify okay

    00:03:52 what are the 2D shapes that I need to cut out how do I glue them properly so that in the end when I inflate it it's going to achieve the 3D shape that I need right so those two things are kind of a big hurdle in using inflatables for engineering applications right so our solution basically addresses those two versions how does it address it yeah that's a good question uh so to address

    00:04:11 these current limitations we look to revolutionize the way we look at inflatable structures so our solution is tens flatables the first 3D printed tensegrity assisted inflatable structures and tens flatables revolves around two key components an external airtight geometry and an internal fibrous mesh that r around the concept

    00:04:31 of tensegrity and what tensegrity is is that when you inflate the structure what happens is that the inner tensegrity mesh uh actually resists tension which allows it to keep its shape as it's inflated but when it's deflated uh it allows compression which allows us to kind of fold away and store the uh the object like a typical inflatable wood and so the secret behind our uh process

    00:04:54 is our actual Innovative patent pending manufacturing process and what this does is that we use 3D printing to basically customize nearly every aspect of the table structure so we can change how the fibrous tensegrity mesh on the inside is oriented the fiber thickness uh the fiber density the fiber orientation and all of this really helps to keep the inflatable shape and so because of this

    00:05:16 we can produce a bunch of different types of inflatable structures like those with complex curves and external or internal features but most importantly what tens flatables can do is create flat surfaces and sharp Corners that you definitely will not be able to see in current uh inflatable techniques and so because of this our method allows us to have uh scalability

    00:05:36 because we use just existing uh fdm in infrastructure which is just basic 3D printing that you can find uh on Amazon really uh those 3D printers um and also we can use any type of material that's able to be extruded through uh traditional 3D printing techniques that could be basic Plastics all the way up to more Advanced Metals uh so you may be wondering why

    00:05:58 specifically do we want to use 3D printing essentially uh as we mentioned before one of the main issues with current limitations of uh inflatable structures is the difficulty of doing the form Finding procedure but with 3D printing we don't have to worry about form Finding at all because it's already a 3D printed object and so to kind of you know facilitate this idea we came up

    00:06:19 with a proprietary algorithm that will take any input file as a any solid 3D object file like an STL file or anything that you can scan with a 3D scanner and turn into a digal file and the algorithm will turn that into a a translatable file that's ready to be sent to any standard desktop printer and because of this we're able to tlat lie really any type of structure like the Empire State

    00:06:43 Building if you would want to do that you're able to do that or an sa logo or even a rocket um and so in addition to lightweighting any solid object what we can do is we obviously can solve those form Finding issues and we're able to automatically produce uh complex shapes with controlled local difference characteristics as well uh so really um with a tense flaiz algorithm we can turn

    00:07:05 any solid object to into a tense flatable uh for a bunch of different applications so to summarize basically our our method our manufacturing method allows us to start with any solid 3D shape we can convert it into an equivalent and flatable object and we are also able to control the internal t Security mesh so that we can achieve as much dimensional precision as we want

    00:07:28 and also tailor the local deformation characteristics right so that kind of opens up this technology for multiple applications um some applications for the automotive industry we could have Dynamic steering wheels with adjustable grips another one could be next Generation safe airbags where maybe we replace the air the car components the steering wheel itself with a

    00:07:48 translatable component right so that adds some security some protection for the passenger the most obvious one is space right Deployable modules we can have things which we print over here take them to space and then then deploy them into the shapes and for whatever load applications that we need up there uh we are aerospace engineers so that's primarily our Focus aerospace

    00:08:08 engineering the main need is to reduce the fuel consumption of aircrafts so we can 3D print 10 flatable Aerospace components as well Electronics we could since we are relying on 3D printing there are two options there we could either print using conductive filaments or we can actually design our objects such that we are 3D printing in such a way that we can integrate sensors within

    00:08:28 it right or we can also have for safety applications where we can design vests or clothing where older people or people who are more prone to falling down they could have something where there's a sensing element as they fall maybe it inflates and protects them right for biomedical applications this is something that we are quite excited about as well uh currently for surgical

    00:08:48 procedures they also use inflatable balloons to be able to open up vessels right now they just expand out completely because they are simple Inflatables that causes a lot of secondary trauma to the tissue surrounding it right so maybe we can overcome those kind of things by controlling the shape of the translat tables uh robotics maybe we can print

    00:09:06 really good grippers for some of the pipe repair applications and also we can also go down the fashion route if somebody wants to 3D print their own bags for example you want to protect your iPhones or your iPads you can 3D print your bags put everything in there if you have an accident if you fall off your bike your devices are still protected right so there's multiple

    00:09:25 applications essentially if there is a structure we can ideally replace it with a translatable that's the end goal right so the main technology is that we can 3D print lightweight scalable and Deployable structures in a variety of categories um our end goal essentially is to reduce weight as a means towards sustainability right and we need new ideas we need creative ideas for a

    00:09:49 Greener future and we believe that this could be one of those ideas so thank you very [Applause] much questions thanks is there any post-processing required after the parts come out of the 3D printer no and that is that is part of our Focus that we wanted to keep the manufacturing process

    00:10:22 as simple as possible so that we can fabricate complex shapes that do not require post processing so that we have an entire streamlined workflow for printing right so the trick there is making sure that the 3D printing process parameters are such that we end up with airtight filaments do you have a a resolution limit for the printing process no so it

    00:10:49 it all depends on the on the 3D printing method that we are using which is basically an extrusion based method so we can go very very high resolution that depends on the material that you're using right so the capillary effects as you're extruding from the nozzle that might affect things but that is different for every single material and on the largest scale with 3D printing

    00:11:07 with Extrusion based people are also printing houses at the scale so we can also print very very large structures as well do you think that limitations uh in the materials behavior that is required for 3D printing is going to impose limitations on the application um I don't think so because primarily right now people there's a lot of work going on on 3D printing on

    00:11:40 aditive Manufacturing in general and the field is moving on very very quickly so there are new and new materials coming out which you can use for 3D printing for example recently we can start printing with conductive filaments we can the work that we have done over here that is using TPU filaments which are flexible filaments um we have started exploring the use of metal filaments as

    00:12:01 well so the material space is increasing more and more so we we expect that to help our case more questions than thank you