Experimental investigation of strength properties of 3D printed ABS composites

Abstract

Owing to the huge demand and dependency of the industry on the lightweight and superior mechanical properties products as well as components, the materials like CF-ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene reinforced with carbon fibers) and PC-ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene reinforced with polycarbonate) have gained utmost importance in the current scenario. The present research in this paper focuses on finding the mechanical properties, mainly the tensile, compression, and flexural properties of both the above-said materials. FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) is used as the printing technique in this research as it is the most suitable and widely used for the selected materials. After experimentation, a comparison was made between the two materials, and it is found that the PC-ABS material is stronger in compression, tension as well as in flexural at all the parametric settings. The infill percentage was observed to be proportional to the strength of the material as expected. Triangular infill geometry was more strong in compression and flexural whereas grid infill geometry was strong in tension. produced stronger mechanical properties were observed for 0-degree raster angle in all the three criteria compared to the 45 and 90-degree raster angles. When the variation of the strength of the material with the infill geometry was observed, the infill geometry was more sensitive in compression and flexural compared to that in tension. The load vs. displacement curves have been plotted to depict the maximum load and the behavior of the material in the elastic and plastic regions.