Tensile Mechanical Behaviour of Multi-Polymer Sandwich Structures via Fused Deposition Modelling

Abstract

The application of single homogeneous materials produced through the fused deposition modelling (FDM) technology restricts the production of high-level multi-material components. The fabrication of a sandwich-structured specimen with different material combinations using conventional thermoplastics such as poly (lactic acid) (PLA), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS) through the filament-based extrusion process can demonstrate an improvement on its properties. This paper aims to assess among these materials, the best material sandwich-structured arrangement design, to enhance the mechanical properties of a part and to compare the results with the homogeneous materials selected. The samples were subjected to tensile testing to identify the tensile strength, elongation at break and Young’s modulus of each material combination. The experimental results demonstrate that applying the PLA-ABS-PLA sandwich arrangement leads to the best mechanical properties between these materials. This study enables users to consider sandwich structure designs as an alternative to manufacturing multi-material components using conventional and low-cost materials. Future work will consider the flexural tests to identify the maximum stresses and bending forces under pressure.

Surface Etching of 3D Printed Poly(lactic acid) with NaOH: A Systematic Approach

“…This is consistent with literature [10,16,21]. The E-modulus is around 4.5 ± 1.6 GPa, which is higher than reported in the literature [1,[29][30][31] but the same publications also state that here is a certain variation to these values. Because of our unique sample design, tensile testing cannot follow ISO or ASTM standard procedures.…”

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

“…Further, researchers [ 18 ] have focused their studies on understanding the influence of different sandwich structures (with three different core shapes, hexagon, triangle, and square shapes) taking into account the following parameters: nature of core shape, number of infill shapes, and orientation of cores and the way the dynamic behavior of sandwich structures is influenced. Preliminary studies investigated the manufacture and testing of mechanical performance (bending and tensile) of honeycomb core sandwich structures [ 19 , 20 , 21 ], printed with different materials (PLA and ABS) and using different filling techniques. An initial investigation into the manufacture of continuous carbon fiber sandwich structures without the addition of supports has been carried out [ 22 ].…”

Deformation Process of 3D Printed Structures Made from Flexible Material with Different Values of Relative Density

“…Based on the literature study conducted, it was found that thermoplastic materials are widely used in the process of manufacturing regular cell structures, demonstrating high efficiency in terms of energy absorption [33][34][35]. The advantages of the additive structure manufacturing make it possible to tailor the deformation process of the structural specimen according to the applied material and elementary singular cell topology [36][37][38][39].…”