Design, Simulation, and Testing of a Novel Bending Stage for Mechanical Characterization of Materials

A novel bending stage is proposed to study the mechanical behavior of materials at small scale. The working principle of the stage is presented along with an experimental evidence using 3D printed prototype. The stage and the specimen are designed to be co-fabricated to avoid the specimen handling and misalignment problems. Analytical and numerical models of the stage are developed to predict the deflection and stresses in the specimen beam upon loading. Good agreement is found between the predictions from the two models. A stage and a sample are 3D printed with a plastic material (PA 2200) to test the feasibility of the proposed design. Bending test is carried out on the sample using the 3D printed stage. Elastic modulus of PA2200 is obtained from the load-deflection data. For comparison, uniaxial tension test was also performed on a PA2200 sample. The modulus of elasticity obtained by the two methods match with each other.