Strength Improvement of Additive Manufacturing Components by Reinforcing Carbon Fiber and by Employing Bioinspired Interlock Sutures
S Arivazhagan, Suresh Mayilswamy, Ruban Whenish
Abstract
Abstract The additive manufacturing (AM) process is used to build three‐dimensional (3D)‐printed components by depositing layers of materials one over another until it completes the building process. There are numerous ways to improve its strength and rigidity of AM processed components. In this research, we discuss an effective method to improve the strength of 3D‐printed component joints by reinforcing carbon fiber (CF) with polylactic acid (PLA) and applying bioinspired interlock sutures. The strength of 3D‐printed components is highly influenced by build parameters such as printing speed, extruder temperature, and layer thickness. In this context, the design of experiment (DOE) was made to ensure the effect of build parameters. The specimens were fabricated according to DOE in order to characterize bending behavior, which was analyzed using special fixture. The bending strength and fracture behavior of specimen for three different interlock joints were studied. The analytical technique of particle swarm optimization was adopted to predict the optimum printing parameters to improve the bending strength of the 3D‐printed components. The result shows that CF‐reinforced PLA with spline interlock suture increases the bending strength of the 3D‐printed specimen when compared to pure PLA.