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Modelization and Structural Analysis of FDM

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Article · April 2012

DOI: 10.1063/1.4707642

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Modelization and structural analysis of FDM parts
J. Martínez, J. L. Diéguez, J. E. Ares, A. Pereira, and J. A. Pérez

Citation: AIP Conf. Proc. 1431, 842 (2012); doi: 10.1063/1.4707642

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4707642
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 Modelization and Structural Analysis of FDM
Parts
J. Martínez(1), J.L. Diéguez(1), J.E. Ares(2), A. Pereira(2), J.A.Pérez(2)
(1)
E. U. Ingeniería Técnica Industrial, University of Vigo, Torrecedeira 86,C.P. 36208; Vigo (Spain)
(2)
Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, C/Maxwell, Campus Lagoas Marcosende, C.P. 36200; Vigo(spain)

Abstract. Get prototypes from technologies of Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a very important step for
the development of new products. In some cases, these prototypes have mechanical properties
lower than the final product, which prevents the designers to use all of the potential that these
technologies can provide. In this study the RP technology known as FDM (Fused Deposition
Modeling) was used to manufacture samples used in tests, in where the orientation of deposition
wires in layers were varying depending on manufacturing placement. Mechanical tests were
performed to verify the stiffness of the final pieces obtained. The Classical Theory of Laminates
(TCL) will be used to predict the mechanical behavior of the parts in different orientations of
manufacturing. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the influence of the strategies in the deposition of
construction material on the mechanical properties of parts obtained by the FDM and analyzes
manufacturing factors for a future generation of a finite elements analytic model that could be used
to obtain the structural behavior of parts made by rapid prototyping with FDM technology.
Keywords: Rapid prototyping, FDM, structural resistance, manufacturing parameters,
deformation.
PACS: 62.20.F-

INTRODUCTION
Manufacturing engineers, designers and managers have heard much about the need
for improving the quality of products. A possible cause for poor quality is the
unfortunate tendency to compromise a design when faced with an urgent timetable to
get a final developed product. In the field of manufacturing engineering, rapid
prototyping is viewed as a technology that allows the production of prototypes, cores,
plastic injection molds, EDM electrodes…, quickly from a CAD file. The consequence
of this rapid response is a development time reduction. A FDM prototype can be
generated so quickly that it becomes simple to verify that the design does indeed
contain the features desired and, conversely, does not contain any features that are not
desired 1.
During first years after the commercial introduction of FDM technology, the
practical applications of this rapid prototyping technology were limited because these
applications only involved the prototyping step and they not yet lead to the fabrication
of functional parts [2].
Visualization, verification, interaction and optimization are available to FDM users
without a subsequent fabrication process. However, once an optimized prototype has
been developed, it is important to fabricate a functional test model. Because this model
has not yet been fabricated or tested, it is not known if it will pass functional test
requirements 3. It may be wasteful to spend the time and expense of generating final
The 4th Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference (MESIC 2011)
AIP Conf. Proc. 1431, 842-848 (2012); doi: 10.1063/1.4707642
© 2012 American Institute of Physics 978-0-7354-1017-6/$30.00

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tooling. There are a number of techniques that have been successfully used to go from a
prototype to a functional model part in a relatively rapid and cost-effective manner.
However it can be useful and a cost manufacturing reduction can be possible, if
prototype is used as test model or perhaps as final part 3.
The layered manufacturing technologies show great potential for fabrication of
functional parts with structural mechanical properties. The Fused Deposition Modeling
(FDM) has potential to produce parts with locally controlled properties by changing the
thickness and orientation of deposition. In this technology, basically a strand of
polymeric material is heated and extruded through a head that moves in the xy plane.
When the extruded material is deposited on the substrate, it cools and solidifies forming
trails or filaments. The deposition of filaments side by side creates layers which
reproduce the desired geometry of the part was obtained from a 3D CAD system 3.
To fully exploit this potential solutions surrounding the manufacturing process and
mechanical properties of FDM parts should be investigated 4. According to the vast
majority of authors, of all the process parameters, the directions of deposition layers and
sizes of gap between filaments are most important for the control of mechanical
properties. It is therefore essential to establish mechanical models of FDM parts to
analyze the effect of variation of process parameters 7.

OBJECTIVES
Get parts using rapid prototyping technologies (RP) is an important step for new
products development. The problem arises during the design and manufacture of
prototype parts (test boxes) used in tests in which high mechanical strength was needed
to support impacts with high speed. The boxes must be designed with reinforced walls
to withstand forces generated during the tests. So that it can be concluded that in some
cases, these prototypes have lower mechanical properties than the final product, which
prevents designers to use all the potential which these technologies can offer.
This study uses a technology known as FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) in the lab
for the preparation of the samples used in tests.
For FDM technology specifically two types of joint forces must be taking account
the structural wire force and joint forces between two consecutive wires. For this
reason, parts manufactured using FDM technology will be treated as orthotropic
materials, since it is assumed that depending on the predominant force in the direction
of stress will result in a more or less structural strength.
It is therefore proposed research to establish which factors are decisive for structural
parts manufacturing by rapid prototyping, to find the best conditions for production of
parts according to the requirements of final parts and find results in order to in a future
build a model simulation for those parts.

METHODOLOGY
First of all, a tests table was made in which the deposition orientation of filaments in
each layer and the number of layers was varied depending on manufacture placement.

Once these parts were built to analyze the structural behavior of samples made by
rapid prototyping, a series of tensile tests according to UNE-EN ISO 527-4 must be
thought. With this test, stress–strain curve of each test piece used in will be extract.

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Once a theoretical model has been obtained the next step will be make a model
validation.
According to ISO 527, samples used in test must have following dimensions:

FIGURE 1. Figure ISO 527 Standard dog bone sample

L3 Total length 150mm

L1 Length of parallel edges narrow zone 60±0,5mm
R Radius 60mm
b2 Width at ends 20±0,2mm
b1 Width at narrow zone 10±0,2mm
h Thickness 2 to 10 mm
L0 Reference length 50±0,5mm
L Length between clamps 115±1mm

The material employed was the P400-ABS which contains: 90±99% acrylonitrile
butadiene styrene resin, 0±2% mineral oils and 0±2% wax. The physical properties are:
tensile strength 0.034 MPa, flexural strength 0.066 MPa, tensile modulus 2.48 MPa,
flexural modulus 2.62 MPa and 50.00% of elongation, among others. The material
filament is drawn into the FDM head from the spools by drive wheels where it is melted
by the liquefier. The temperature of the liquefier is around 270ºC for the P400 ABS
Plastic. The material is extruded out of the FDM Tips where it solidifies (in around 0.1
s), shrinks, and fuses to previously deposited material as the FDM head is moved in the
horizontal (X±Y) plane. A road width of 0.60 mm was used and a layer height of
0.25mm was selected.

TABLE 1. Manufacturing process parameters

Parameters Value
Gap size 0.254
Head temperature 270ºC
Room temperature 70ºC
Material ABS P400

The manufacturing system consists of two primary components, the Dimension bst
768 3D printer and CatalystEX. CatalystEX is the preprocessing software. Dimension
builds models, including internal features, directly from CAD STL files. The system
builds three-dimensional parts by extruding a bead of ABS P400 plastic through a
computer-controlled extrusion head, producing parts that are ready to use immediately
after completion. With two layer resolution settings, it can be choose to build a part
quickly for design verification. Dimension’s build envelope measures 203 x 203 x 305

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mm, and depending on part placement designed in CatalystEX, samples layers have
different deposition directions and have a different number of layers.

FIGURE 2. Different part manufacturing positioning

Once, samples will be tested, using a finite element software, ABAQUS in this case,
and based on classical laminate plate theory (CLPT), a simulation model would be
made 11.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In the first tensile tests performed has been obtained the following stress-strain
curves, these showing that pieces have barely plastic deformation. Samples have broken
near to elastic limit, something usual in stiffness materials.

Test 1 Positioning Layers Peak Rm Rp Deformation

force (N) (MPa) 0.2(MPa) %
X Y Z
45º 0º 45º 67 810.5 20.25 19.95 9.35

FIGURE 3. Low layers strain-stress results

In this case, for a few layers, it can be observed a high repeatability, something
unusual in polymeric materials. This fact is observed in the great majority of the
experiments, the dispersion appearing in a few parts for tensile stress test.

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Test 2 Positioning Layers Peak Rm Rp Deformation
force (N) (MPa) 0.2(MPa) %
X Y Z
45º 0º 45º 465 672 16.8 15.975 6.2

FIGURE 4. Low layers strain-stress results

Test 3 Positioning Layers Peak Rm Rp Deformation

force (N) (MPa) 0.2(MPa) %
X Y Z
45º 0º 45º 592 509 12.7 12.7 4.075

FIGURE 5. Intermediate stiffness part strain-stress test results

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 In this case it can be seen a piece of great stiffness, which is represented in chart as
a non plastic deformation and a low lengthening.
The elastic limit value (Rm) range from 25MPa to 12MPa for tested parts, the
higher value belongs to parts with lower number of layers. In the same way the peak
force in strain tests, ranging from 500N in parts with high number of layers to 800N in
pieces with low number of layers.
All of these tensile tests were made using only one gap configuration, in this case a
distance gap of 0.245mm. When a different gap configuration to manufacture parts
was used (0.33mm) a high dispersion appeared in tests results due to the large number
of holes and the distances between wires, so the mechanical behavior of these pieces
became unpredictable.

FIGURE 6. Graphic representation of tensile stress test results for a 0.33mm gap configuration

CONCLUSIONS
In first tests performed was observed that samples manufacturing in FDM rapid
prototyping technology, stiffness of samples is higher than traditional manufacturing
technologies, this causes a tensile break with no deformation, resulting in a stress-
strain curves without plastic region and a Poisson ratio value near to zero.
It has been observed that the road shape and the road to road interaction, as well as
the path, strongly affect the properties and performance of the finished product.
Summarizing, it can be said that the mechanical properties of the final parts
considerably depend on two important modeling phases, the chosen building direction,
thus the orientation of the object with respect to the base and the chosen path, thus the
way every layer is filled by roads.
The breaking of the samples tested was not produce in the central part of them, the
breaking was revealed in areas with stress concentration due to higher punctual defects
accumulation like blow holes, slags...
In case of more elastic samples, crystallization happens at joints between layers so
that the material becomes more stiffness, due to this crystallization, samples broke
early during plastic deformation.

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 Regarding manufacturing process, the samples placement in machine determines a
higher or lower number of layers of material deposited. In these first tests was found
that a lower number of layers generates a less brittle part, because of this, a small
plastic deformation area appears in strain curves, also appears a little polymer
crystallization at certain points of stress accumulation, so that samples becomes more
resistant.
A higher gap value for this machine manufactured parts, made the mechanical
behavior become unpredictable due to materials defects so that in this study only one
gap configuration of 0.245mm were used.
The fact that the mechanical properties of the part depend on the orientation and
path becomes particularly critical when FDM technology is used to produce
components directly for end use. In this last case, indeed it is really important to be
able to predict and design the object with the desired tolerances and characteristics.

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