Mechanical and Thermo-mechanical Properties of Carbon fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composite Fabricated Using Fused Deposition Modeling Method

Abstract

Abstract Additive manufacturing technologies have been successfully applied in various engineering applications because advantages of low cost, minimal wastage and ease of material change. Fused deposition modeling is one of the most popular additive manufacturing techniques used for fabricating thermoplastic parts. Due to the intrinsically limited mechanical properties of thermoplastic materials, there is need to improve it by addition of specific filler material. In present paper chopped Carbon fibers and Polylactic Acid is used as reinforcing material and thermoplastic matrix for the preparation of fiber reinforced plastic composites by fused deposition modeling. Mechanical and thermomechanical properties are studied by varying the percentage of chopped carbon fiber into thermoplastic matrix. Carbon fiber reinforced plastic feedstock filaments are fabricated with varying weight percentage like 12%, 15% and 20% of chopped carbon fiber. Mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of composite studied as per ASTM standard. It is observed that at 15 weight percent of carbon fiber reinforcement shows 32% and 22% enhancement in tensile strength and flexural strength as compared to pure Polylactic acid sample. As compared with pure Polylactic sample impact strength and hardness value increases by 53% and 85% with the reinforcement of 20 weight percent of carbon fiber. Dynamic mechanical analysis results shows enhancement in storage modulus and glass transition temperature by 18% and 3oC with reinforcement of 15 weight percentage of carbon fiber compared with pure Polylactic acid sample. Thermogravimetric analysis shows composite with 15 weight percentage carbon fiber has higher thermal stability