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

Athanasios Galatas,Hany Hassanin,Yahya Zweiri,Lakmal Seneviratne

doi:10.3390/polym10111262

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.

Highlights

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, have significantly improved since they were first introduced in the twentieth century
This paper proposed a novel sandwich structure with improved strength using additively manufactured acrylonitrile butadiene styrenecarbon (ABS) laminated with Carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) layers
It was aimed to improve the specific strength and stiffness of the resultant sandwich structure to meet the requirements of UAV applications

Summary

Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, have significantly improved since they were first introduced in the twentieth century. They become a preferable technology in many applications such as military, agricultural, search and rescue, telecommunications, topography, mapping, and surveillance [1,2]. Innovative manufacturing techniques and materials have been developed to improve the performance of UAVs by producing high endurance and lightweight structures [3]. This can be achieved by the implementation of materials with high specific strength, high impact properties, and stiffness.

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Conclusion