Open Access

ARTICLE

Numerical Simulation and Experimental Study of the Stress Formation Mechanism of FDM with Different Printing Paths

by Heping Hou¹, Yang Yue^1,*, Jian Liu¹, Darun Xi², Shanhui Liu¹

1 Faculty of Printing, Packaging Engineering and Digital Media Technology, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710000, China
2 Shaanxi Beiren Printing Machinery Co., Ltd., Weinan, 714000, China

* Corresponding Author: Yang Yue. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Green, Recycled and Intelligent Technologies in Printing and Packaging)

Journal of Renewable Materials 2023, 11(1), 273-289. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2023.021167

Received 30 December 2021; Accepted 28 March 2022; Issue published 10 August 2022

Abstract

Environmental contamination has been caused by petroleum-based polymeric materials in the melt deposition process. Nowadays biodegradable materials have been widely used in the fused deposition modeling (FDM) industry, such as polylactic acid (PLA). However, internal complex thermal stress and deformations in part caused by an uneven distribution of PLA filament deposition temperatures during FDM, which will seriously affect the geometric accuracy of the printed part. In order to reduce material waste and environmental pollution during the printing process, the accuracy of PLA part can be improved. Herein, numerical simulation was carried out to investigate the temperature field and stress field during the building and cooling process of cuboid specimens. The effects of printing path on the thermal stress and temperature field during the building process were mainly studied. The results show that the printing path has a significant effect on the stress distribution. The most uniform stress distribution and the smallest deformation were obtained using the Zig Zag printing path. Finally, the residual stress during the cooling process was collected using strain gauges embedded at the mid-plane of the FDM built cuboid specimens. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental results.

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Keywords

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