The effect of rod orientation on the strength of highly porous filament printed 3D SiC ceramic architectures

Abstract

The present work explores the strength enhancement via minor modifications of the pattern design in pure light SiC woodpile structures created by filament printing. In particular, the effect of the filament stacking angle on both the compression resistance and the elastic modulus of these structures are evaluated. Different patterns were designed while maintaining the bulk structure density, therefore the differences in the mechanical data (strength and elastic modulus) are not attributable to density variations. All of these materials were partially sintered at intermediate temperature for additional porosity enhancement. Moreover, SiC specimens made by full filament overlapping were produced to serve as reference massive material. Remarkably, the massive SiC printed material displays ordered spherical porosity and a closed-pore foam appearance, thus revealing a novel route for producing these type of porosity. Results evidence that the structure robustness can be tuned through slight design modification, which thus offers the possibility of further structure lightening without reducing the target strength.