Compression, Local Buckling and Crushing of Printed Photopolymer Structures: Material State, Architecture and Boundary Conditions

The compressive response of a printed photopolymer structure is not a single material property. A solid coupon may exhibit elastic deformation, yielding, cracking, barreling or confinement, while a lattice can respond through strut bending, node rotation, local cell buckling, global instability, brittle fracture, progressive crushing and densification. The measured curve also depends on as-built relative density, wall and strut fidelity, skins, platen alignment, friction, aspect ratio, contact, loading rate and the definitions used for stress, strain, plateau and densification. This review defines a non-compensatory qualification framework for monotonic compression, local buckling and crushing of solid and architected vat-printed photopolymer structures. It separates base-material constitutive response from architecture-driven response, requires the tested geometry rather than the CAD model to control interpretation, and treats boundary conditions and contact as part of the experiment. Energy absorption must retain its integration limit and mass or volume normalization. Numerical models require measured geometry, appropriate material and contact laws, imperfection treatment and independent validation at another scale, cell count, relative density or topology. The primary corpus supports mechanism-resolved evaluation across rigid, tough and elastomeric systems, but not universal plateau stresses, densification strains, topology rankings, buckling coefficients or crashworthiness claims.