Mechanical, Electrical and Thermal Behaviour of Additively Manufactured Thermoplastic Composites for High Performance Applications

Abstract

The composite material field is extending its boundaries towards the development of lightweight designs and high performance applications for various branches of engineering. Current days demand for development of sustainable lightweight materials has resulted in higher volume usage of thermoplastic based composites. There exists various type of traditional manufacturing methods based on type of reinforcements and matrix material, but these labor-oriented methods have certain disadvantages while fabricating complex structures. To overcome these drawbacks, researchers pointed out a flexible manufacturing process called Additive Manufacturing (AM). AM technique involves the fabrication of layer by layer printing of filaments to produce three dimensional complex composite parts and it produces the parts directly by reading the CAD data file. The AM way of manufacturing approach utilizes different thermoplastic-based materials for the design and production of application-oriented parts using various fibre reinforcements. This review deals with the study of mechanical, thermal and electrical properties of thermoplastic composites which are produced using various AM techniques and lists out their potential applications. The advantages of various AM techniques are also quoted in the development of thermoplastic composite in the subsequent sections. Further, the researchers are putting continuous efforts for the development of new thermoplastic composites using various AM techniques to achieve higher service life, bioactivity and cell growth with higher mechanical properties.