3D printing technologies such as masked stereolithography (MSLA) and digital light processing (DLP) enable the fabrication of polymer structures with functionally graded material properties, e.g., through grayscale photopolymerization with varying light intensities. As these materials can undergo large elastic deformations, as well as time-dependent and inelastic effects, their mechanical and computational modeling is challenging.

In this project, we want to extend the numerical implementations of our existing visco-hyperelastic material models for grayscale 3D printed materials. Depending on the student’s interest, the scope of the project may include the implementation of the model in a finite element software or code, the numerical verification of the simulation models, their experimental validation with 3D printed structures, or their application for the design and simulation of engineering structures and metamaterials.