Tunable, Resettable, Printable, Impact Energy Absorbing Matrix

Landers on extraterrestrial bodies may adversely affect the targets' surfaces because they land too hard . The goal of this CIF was to produce a 3-D printed, energy-absorbing, spring-like prototype that could absorb impact energy. From a design standpoint, the absorber should be characterizable and tunable. To achieve these goals, the design required the material stresses be kept below the yield point. Due to the amount of energy absorbed being limited by the yield stress of the material, it was discovered that the concept required designs that would have too much mass and would also be too geometrically inefficient for the envisioned missions. Although much was learned with developing single-print mechanisms that may have tangential benefits, the core concept was determined to be impractical. It was found that crushable material, which exceeds the yield point, can absorb orders-of-magnitude more energy than the spring-like concepts that formed the basis of this concept.