A micromechanical approach for predicting effective mechanical properties of Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites fabricated with 3D printers

Abstract

Additive  Manufacturing  or  Three  dimensional  (3D)  printing  is  a  new  technology  widely  used  to  produce  three-dimensional  parts.  3D  polymer-based printers have become easily accessible to the public. Recently, a new  kind  of  3D  printer  has  been  developed  to  manufacture  printed  polymer  composites   reinforced   with   continuous   or   short   fibers.   Usually,   the  technology  used  by  these  3D  printers  is  Fused  Deposition  Modelling  (FDM).  The  aim  of  this  study  is  to  predict  the  mechanical  properties  of  printed  materials  in  Fiber-reinforced  polymer  (FRP)  composites  using  a  micromechanical  approach.  Indeed,  the  main  idea  of  this  approach  is  to  characterize  the  effective  mechanical  properties  from  a  microstructural  description of the heterogeneous materials and the knowledge of the local  behavior of constituents using the homogenization process. The predictions  of  the  effective  mechanical  properties  were  confronted  with  experimental  data obtained from the literature. The difference between the predicted and  experimental   values   does   not   exceed   28.6%.   The   micromechanical  approach is a good tool for designers to estimate the mechanical properties  of  fiber-reinforced  3D  printed  polymer  composites  which  require  specific  mechanical properties.

Keywords

• Micromechanical approach
• FRP composites
• 3D printing

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