3D Printing of Polymer Composites

Narei, Hamid; Jabbari, Masoud

Abstract

Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing (MEAM) has recently been acknowledged as a time-efficient and reliable process of manufacturing polymer composite for prototypes and finished products. As properties of resins used in MEAM, including rheology and the mechanical characteristics, extrudate swell, the orientation of fibres, and the processing conditions, including strand-to-strand distance, layer thickness, infill density and build orientation, significantly affect the mechanical and thermal properties and surface roughness of MEAM-fabricated parts, fabrication time, and the manufacturing resolution, they should be thoroughly investigated. However, the interplay of various parameters hinders the proper understanding of the influences each parameter exerts on the performance of the fabricated part. Considering the capabilities of numerical modelling using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate a process with completely tailored specifications, it can be used to address the aforementioned barrier. Hence, this chapter aims to provide a brief overview of the numerical modelling of MEAM technology for the production of polymer composites.

• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 8, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 107--123
• Book Title: Applied Complex Flow: Applications of Complex Flows and CFD
• ISBN: 978-981-19-7746-6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7746-6_5