Mechanical characterization of Polymer matrix composites produced by 3D printing

Abstract

In the last decade, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has undergone exponential growth and gained more and more importance in the recent research, mainly due to the freedom of creating sophisticated geometries that are impossible to produce using either one or a combination of several alternative production techniques. AM technology has mostly been used for prototyping application during the product design and development phase in many different industrial sectors. However, 3D printed prototypes have limited mechanical properties and the printed parts usually cannot fulfil mechanical requirements for functional applications. As a consequence, this problem has given rise to a new concept of 3D printing technique based on adding fibers to the polymeric material matrix. By means of this technique, the mechanical properties of the printed parts can be enhanced. The current thesis has researched in carbon fiber reinforcement for nylon specimens printed by the Mark One printer from Markforged. The carbon reinforced specimens were compared with pure nylon specimens by means of the results obtained from tensile and flexural tests. Nylon and carbon reinforced nylon specimens were printed for both tensile and flexural tests. The methodology consisted of obtaining the specimens by 3D printer, do the mechanical characterization and treat the data obtained. In order to print the specimens and configure the printing options, a software named Eiger was used. The results of the mechanical characterization of carbon reinforced nylon and pure nylon specimens were compared and thoroughly discussed, so as to assess the improvement of the carbon reinforced nylon specimens’ mechanical properties.