Failure and fracture in adhesively bonded 3D-printed joints: An overview on the current trends

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) as an innovative technique with favourable and unique solutions in fabricating complex products, is being widely used in diverse applications. AM, also known as three-dimensional (3D) printing technology was introduced for fabrication of prototypes, and currently its applications have been widely extended to production of end-used products too. As a result, mechanical strength of 3D-printed parts, and specially joints with 3D-printed substrates (adherends) gain considerable significance. This review attempts to comprehensively summarise recent advancements in failure and fracture of adhesively bonded joints with 3D-printed polymeric adherends. To this aim, we have reviewed experimental studies, which investigate effects of adhesive and printing parameters on the failure of 3D-printed adhesive joints. In addition, different approaches to strength improvement of 3D-printed adhesive joints are reviewed and discussed. Since computational finite element models (FEM) can provide a profound knowledge about the stress and force transition between adhesive layers and 3D-printed adherends, an overview on different FEM approaches in the field has been presented. The documented data can be used not only for comparison, failure analysis, and improvement of 3D-printed adhesive joints, but also is beneficial for the future research and further studies in fabrication of a 3D-printed joint with a superior structural performance and integrity.