Additive Manufactured Sandwich Composite/ABS Parts for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Applications

Abstract

Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of most popular 3D printing techniques of thermoplastic polymers. Nonetheless, the poor mechanical strength of FDM parts restricts the use of this technology in functional parts of many applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) where lightweight, high strength, and stiffness are required. In the present paper, the fabrication process of low-density acrylonitrile butadiene styrenecarbon (ABS) with carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) sandwich layers for UAV structure is proposed to improve the poor mechanical strength and elastic modulus of printed ABS. The composite sandwich structures retains FDM advantages for rapid making of complex geometries, while only requires simple post-processing steps to improve the mechanical properties. Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to investigate the influence of the core density and number of CFRP layers on the mechanical properties. The results showed an improvement of specific strength and elastic modulus with increasing the number of CFRP. The specific strength of the samples improved from 20 to 145 KN·m/kg while the Young’s modulus increased from 0.63 to 10.1 GPa when laminating the samples with CFRP layers. On the other hand, the core density had no significant effect on both specific strength and elastic modulus. A case study was undertaken by applying the CFRP/ABS/CFRP sandwich structure using the proposed method to manufacture improved dual-tilting clamps of a quadcopter UAV.

Mechanical Performances of Lightweight Sandwich Structures Produced by Material Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing

“…In addition, FFF technology has been used to create different cellular topologies, such as Gyroid and Schwarz P [ 11 ] or a 3D-printed hierarchical gyroid structure with embedded TiO 2 nanoparticles [ 12 ]. Because the printing of lightweight sandwich structures is difficult, the manufacture of these structures consists of the core printed from different materials, such as polylactic acid (PLA) [ 13 , 14 ], FLX 9795-DM [ 15 ], ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) [ 14 , 16 ] and the skins made from carbon fiber reinforced polymer and they are assembled using the vacuum bagging method.…”

4D Printing of NiTi Auxetic Structure with Improved Ballistic Performance

“…Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a technology to create objects layer by layer using a 3D printer according to a digital model. The technology enabling the processing of metals [ 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ], ceramics [ 34 ], polymers [ 35 ], and composites [ 36 ] has been widely employed in many industries, such as biomedical [ 37 ], defense [ 17 ], aerospace [ 38 , 39 ], and energy [ 40 ]. The ability of AM to process a wide range of materials into objects with intricate geometries such as auxetic and cellular structures and to obtain desired mechanical properties has led to the many advancements of this technology.…”

Case Study of Chosen Sandwich-Structured Composite Materials for Means of Transport

“…An artificial neural network was used to investigate the influence of the core density and number of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer layers on the mechanical properties. The results showed an improvement of specific strength and elastic modulus with increasing number of carbon fiber-reinforced polymers [31]. The thermal properties of the materials studied in this paper can be found in [32].…”