Effect of printing design and forming thermal environment on pseudo-ductile behavior of continuous carbon/glass fibers reinforced nylon composites

Abstract

Hybrid carbon/glass fibers composites can possess pseudo-ductility of progressive failure through material design to achieve the function of load early warning. The printing design and forming thermal environment of parts have important influence on the pseudo-ductile behavior of hybrid fiber composites. In this paper, the hybrid continuous carbon/glass fibers reinforced nylon composites with progressive failure pseudo-ductility were prepared by additive manufacturing, and the effects of printing layer thickness, carbon/glass fibers layer ratio and forming thermal environment on the tensile properties and pseudo-ductility of hybrid fiber composites were investigated and characterized. The results indicate that the printing layer thickness has no significant impact on the tensile strength of hybrid fiber composites, the pseudo-ductility is obvious when the layer thickness of [G5C2G5] is 0.075 mm and 0.125 mm. With the same material ratio, reducing the layers or setting the printing platform temperature (100 °C) can decrease defects generation to achieve the better pseudo-ductility. However, the pseudo-ductility immensely weakens using the annealing treatment of 120 °C for 3 h. The pseudo-ductility of the [G5C2G5]0.075, [G5C2G5], [G3C1G3] and [G4C1G4] samples have been discovered successfully.