Preparation of biodegradable PLA/PCL composite filaments: effect of PLA content on strength
Haoyi Qiu, Kai Hou, Jicheng Zhou, W. J. Liu, Jiarui Wen, Q F Gu
Abstract
Abstract As one of the predominant 3D additive manufacturing technology, fused deposition modeling (FDM) suffers from the rich printable filaments. The goal of this paper is to produce a fully biodegradable polymeric composite filament by blending polylactic acid (PLA) with polycaprolactone (PCL). The effect of PCL content on the geometry, size, roughness and ultimate tensile stress of PLA/PCL composite filaments was investigated, and mechanical properties of the printed components were tested. The results indicate that, with the increase of PCL content, the diameter and ultimate tensile stress gradually decreased, while the surface roughness gradually increased. Due to the toughing effect, with an increase in PCL content, the tensile strength of parts decreased, while the elongation at break and the impact strength kept rising. It was found the parts printed with the addition of 20% of PCL composite filament exhibits the optimal comprehensive performance.