Abstract
Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) is a biodegradable material which is being extensively used in industrial applications. Due to its low glass transition temperature and cost, PLA is ideal as a feed stock in 3D printing applications. However, it has a brittle nature which makes it vulnerable to impact loads. In this paper, PLA is used to make 3D printed plates that are impact tested using an in-house low velocity impact test apparatus. A high-speed camera and an infrared thermography system are used to investigate the impact damage properties of the material. The plates manufactured with 0° orientation are used to conduct two different experiments; one with varying energies and the other with varying thickness at two different impact locations, namely at plate’s centre and close to a clamped edge. At 1 J impact energy, the plates showed a tensile crack behaviour (cracks between extrudates) and for 3 J energy it showed a mixed crack behaviour of tensile and shear (cracks along and across extrudates) with more energy dissipations than the 1 J impact. For the 1 J impact, more energy is dissipated at the centre of the plate (42.3%) than the impact close to a clamped edge (32.8%), whereas for the 3 J impact more energy is dissipated near clamped edges (97.1%) compared to the centre of the plate (54.9%). Subsequently, the 3 J impact is used for the second experiment due to the higher energy dissipation. Finally, an experimental study is conducted on plates with varied layer thickness from 0.10 mm to 0.18 mm. Results show that the increase in layer thickness (decrease in number of layers) increases the impact absorption for plates impacted at their centre. For plates impacted near their clamped edge, a zig-zag impact damage pattern of increasing and decreasing magnitudes is observed, but the energy dissipation values are higher than the centre impacted plates.
Highlights
Different methods are developed in 3D printing as they need to provide the mechanical performance and strength compared to the parts made of conventional methods like injection moulding
As we extend our research in 3D printing, only plastics were manufactured using Additive manufacturing (AM) processes but in later researches, thermo plastics reinforced with carbon fibres were investigated by Ning et al [21] in which they worked on the effects of carbon fibre content on the mechanical properties and porosity of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastic
For P2 impact location, first, there is an increase in absorbed energy percentage with an increase in layer thickness till 0.14 mm and it decreases
Summary
Different methods are developed in 3D printing as they need to provide the mechanical performance and strength compared to the parts made of conventional methods like injection moulding They include as Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), inkjet 3D printing (3DP), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), stereolithography (SLA), direct energy deposition (DED) and Vat photopolymerization (VP). The processes have been improved to meet requirements of a better finished product, defects reduction and good mechanical properties. These AM processes follow different ASTM standards with respect to its production and the output product depends on several parameters such as print speed, nozzle temperature, bed temperature, raster angle, percentage infill, resolution, and material. A brief description of the most popular AM processes is given below
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