Influence of the geometry on the mechanical performance of tubular interlockings: A study of the Sine Block

TL;DR

This study explores how the geometry of tubular interlocking blocks, specifically the Sine Block, affects their mechanical performance using multibody dynamics and finite element analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a parametric design of sine curve-based tubular interlockings and analyzes their mechanical behavior and stability through simulations.

Findings

Block geometry significantly influences mechanical performance.

Proposed TIA design does not exhibit explosive failure.

Non-exploding TIAs have superior mechanical properties.

Abstract

Topological interlocking assemblies (TIA) are arrangements of blocks such that rigid-body motions of the blocks are fully constrained by their neighbours and a fixed frame. In this work, we investigate tubular interlocking structures derived from the sine curve and parametrised by several geometric design parameters. We analyse the behaviour of these parametrised tubular interlockings under various boundary conditions and examine how our proposed parameters influence the mechanical response. For this purpose, we first develop a simplified multibody dynamics formulation that enables an efficient exploration of how the design parameters of the block influence the load transfer within the assembly. To further corroborate these results, we perform several finite element simulations, which give insights into the mechanical behaviour of our proposed TIA. Our results show that the block geometry plays a decisive role in the mechanical performance of the corresponding TIA. We additionally discuss the problem of exploding TIAs and demonstrate that the TIA resulting from our Sine Block does not exhibit this behaviour. Lastly, we provide evidence that non-exploding TIAs possess better mechanical properties than exploding ones.