Taguchi method-based sensitivity study of design parameters representing specific strength of wire-woven bulk Kagome under compression

Wire-woven bulk Kagome (WBK) is a new truss-type cellular metal fabricated by assembling helically-formed wires. In this work, the main design parameters governing the compressive strength of WBK were selected from various geometric and material factors. The Taguchi method was used to minimize the number of experiments required to evaluate the sensitivity of each design parameter with the specific compressive strength of WBK. As numerical experiments, finite element analyses were performed to investigate the mechanical responses of WBK with various combinations of levels for selected design parameters. We found that the slenderness ratio is the dominant and most influential design parameter characterizing the specific strength of WBK, followed by the strain-hardening exponent and the yield strength of the brazed filler metal. The height of the braze normalized by the wire diameter is the least influential design parameter. In addition, an optimized design for the highest specific strength of WBK was derived.