Experimental, Computational, and Dimensional Analysis of the Mechanical Performance of Fused Filament Fabrication Parts

Abstract

Process parameters in Additive Manufacturing (AM) are key factors in the mechanical performance of 3D-printed parts. In order to study their effect, a three-zone model based on the printing pattern was developed. This modelization distinguished three different zones of the 3D-printed part, namely cover, contour, and inner; each zone was treated as a different material. The cover and contour zones were characterized via uniaxial tensile tests and the inner zones via computational homogenization. The model was then validated by means of bending tests and their corresponding computational simulations. To reduce the number of required characterization experiments, a relationship between the raw and 3D-printed material was established by dimensional analysis. This allowed describing the mechanical properties of the printed part with a reduced set of the most influential non-dimensional relationships. The influence on the performance of the parts of inter-layer adhesion was also addressed in this work via the characterization of samples made of Polycarbonate Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS/PC), a polymeric material well known for its poor adhesion strength. It was concluded that by using this approach, the number of required testing configurations could be reduced by two thirds, which implies considerable cost savings.

Influence of Infill Pattern on Mechanical Behavior of Polymeric and Composites Specimens Manufactured Using Fused Filament Fabrication Technology

“…Thus, a wide range of geometrical deposition patterns has been considered for pure polymers, such as nylon [2], polylactic acid (PLA) [22,26,48,[61][62][63][64], and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) [7,8,36,56,57,65], and composite materials (nylon matrices with carbon or glass fiber reinforcement) [66,67].…”

Characterization of Epoxy-Based Rapid Mold with Profiled Conformal Cooling Channel

“…In general, additive manufacturing (AM) is capable of manufacturing CCC with complex geometries. Thus, fused filament fabrication [ 18 ] was used to print PCCC and CCCC using polyvinyl butyral (PVB) filament [ 19 , 20 ]. The ethanol solution was then used to dissolve the PVB CCC incorporated inside the rapid mold for wax injection molding.…”

A hybrid numerical-experimental strategy for predicting mechanical response of components manufactured via FFF

“…The in-fill structure is modelled as a homogeneous medium with an equivalent constitutive behaviour [28]. It is convenient to use RVE-based homogenization [29][30][31] since the heterogeneities in the in-fill present periodicity over the domain and the structure is characterized by the repetition of a unit cell [32][33][34].…”