Expanded polystyrene (EPS) concrete is commonly used as the core material of commercial sandwich panels (CSPs). It is environmentally friendly and lightweight but has poor strength. Adding fibers can improve the microstructure of EPS concrete and reduce the weakening effect of EPS beads on the mechanical properties of concrete. An orthogonal experimental design (OED) was used in this paper to analyze the influence of length and content of polypropylene fiber (PF), glass fiber (GF), and carbon fiber (CF) on the physical and mechanical properties and micromorphology of EPS concrete. Among them, CFs have the most apparent impact on concrete and produce the most significant improvements in all properties. According to the requirements of the flexural performance of CSPs, the splitting tensile strength was taken as the optimization index, and the predicted optimal combination (OC) of EPS concrete with fibers was selected. The variations in the material properties, mechanical properties, and microstructure with age were analyzed. The results show that with increasing age, the dry density, compressive strength, and splitting tensile strength of concrete are markedly improved relative to those of the CSP core material and the control case (CC), and even the degree of hydration is improved.
Mechanical and functional properties of metamaterials could be simultaneously manipulated via their architectures. This study proposes multifunctional metamaterials possessing both load-bearing capacity and energy storage capability, comprising multi-phase lattice metamaterial and cylindrical battery cells. Defect phase are incorporated into the metamaterials, which are then printed with stainless steel powder. The printed metamaterials are assembled with battery cells and compressed. Experimental results revealed that the voids in the lattice metamaterials, could guide deformation mode away from the internal battery cell that postponed the emergence of battery short-circuit. Effects of void phase pattern and content are discussed by simulation. We found that the multifunctional system could absorb greater energy after defect phase incorporation, as designed with proper void phase pattern and content. Also, these findings are further validated for the system with six battery cells. This study demonstrated how to design an energy-storage metamaterials with enhanced mechanical properties and battery safety simultaneously. Also, defect engineering was helpful for battery protection and energy absorption of the multifunctional system.
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