Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40964-020-00145-3

FULL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Effect of FDM process parameters on mechanical properties

of 3D‑printed carbon fibre–PLA composite
M. Kamaal1   · M. Anas1 · H. Rastogi1 · N. Bhardwaj1 · A. Rahaman2

Received: 7 December 2019 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 / Published online: 19 August 2020
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Abstract
This paper presents the effect of process parameters of the fused deposition modelling (FDM) method on mechanical proper-
ties of 3D-printed carbon fibre (CF)-reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) composite. Building direction, infill percentage, and
layer height are the process variables considered for studies due to their high influencing factor in mechanical properties of
product. Tensile strength and impact strength are the response parameters considered in the study. Multi-optimisation is done
using TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to Ideal Solution) analysis to find the best set of parameters
that would provide the maximum strength using minimum material. The material used is CF-reinforced PLA composite
filament (1.75-mm diameter) for 3D printing.

Keywords  Additive manufacturing · Fused deposition modelling (FDM) · Process parameters · Mechanical properties ·
TOPSIS · Carbon fibre-reinforced PLA composite

1 Introduction
Fused deposition modelling (FDM) process was introduced
by American company Stratasys in 1992 [1]. FDM is a
sort of additive manufacturing technology that allows the
construction of three-dimensional prototypes, objects and
products through a computer-aided manufacturing process
(Fig. 1). It is used in solid models and prototypes in a layer-
by-layer approach. FDM is also known as fused filament
fabrication.
There are many advantages of using FDM process, such
as the freedom in design to produce complex shapes without
the need to invest in moulds and dies, computer’s ability to
produce internal features of a product, which is impossible
using traditional manufacturing techniques. FDM enables
the reduction of the number of assemblies by producing
combined complex parts [2]. FDM’s advantages can be
received through the supply chain by reducing the lead time
* M. Kamaal
m.kamaal1996@gmail.com
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, JSS Academy
of Technical Education, Noida, UP 201301, India
2
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, School
of Mechanical Engineering, VIT, Vellore 632014, India
and the need for storage and transportation, especially where
high customization is necessary in applications [3].
FDM is a popular RP technology primarily utilised in
making complex geometrical efficient parts in industries in
a short period of time. The performance, quality and proper-
ties of parts manufactured by FDM process largely depend
on various process parameters. Thus, it is necessary to study
FDM process parameters to achieve desired quality charac-
teristics in the parts manufactured by the FDM process. The
study of the effect of the 3D printing process parameter on
response characteristics of the FDM parts helps us to set the
level of process variables which will cause improvement in
the quality of printed parts [4–6].
The set of parameters obtained by this study can be
directly used to produce high strength and low cost parts
for 3D-printed products which can be beneficial in saving
time for finding the right parameters of a design requiring
strength in a particular mechanical characteristic.
Material occupying the largest market share in the field
of 3D printing is the photopolymers. To be able to compete
with traditional materials, the composite materials are abso-
lutely necessary for 3D printing to be a feasible technology
that can produce parts as superior as the parts produced by
conventional technologies with high mechanical, electrical
and thermal properties (Fig. 2).

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64
Fig. 1  Schematic of FDM process
Fig. 2  YPANX Falcon 3D printer
As for composites, CF materials are a chief competitor
in the industry. When CF and base material are composited
for 3D printing, strength is added while keeping the parts
lightweight due to lesser base material in the prints [7]. It is
a cost-effective substitute for Titanium like more expensive
materials. CF shows higher thermal resistance and better
impact energy absorption capability compared to traditional
photopolymers used in 3D printing. The motivation for
selecting chopped CF/PLA composite (Fig. 3) was its vast
application in various fields (for example medical, sports,
automobile and aviation) and ease of printing it as compared
to continuous fibre-reinforced plastic [8, 9].
The ever-increasing demand for fibre-reinforced plas-
tic composites drives novel production processes during a
shorter production cycle and lower production costs, which
are difficult to detect during CF-reinforced plastic moulding
through conventional moulding processes. The CF-reinforced
plastic composites have been reported for being fabricated by
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Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69
Fig. 3  CF–PLA filament
the FDM process. The process parameters used in FDM of
CF-reinforced plastic composites are the same as in FDM of
pure plastic 3D printing materials. After adding fibre rein-
forcements, it is essential to investigate proper FDM process
parameters to ensure the quality of the reinforced plastic parts
manufactured by this method [10].
The work aims to investigate a perfect set of optimised
parameters that can produce high strength 3D-printed parts
with a minimum amount of material for either impact
strength demanding products or tensile strength demanding
products.
2 Experimental details
2.1 Materials and equipment
The material used in the present study was CF-PLA fila-
ment of 1.75-mm diameter with 5.50% CF by weight pro-
duced by ZIRO, China (Fig. 3). The novelty of this project is
using this composite material in 3D printing. The 3D printer
used to manufacture the specimen was the Ypanx Falcon
3D printer (Fig. 2) with a 0.4-mm nozzle diameter. Product
modelling was done on Solidworks2016 and 3D printing
software Cura Ultimaker.
2.2 Sample preparation
The specimen in this study to evaluate building direction,
infill percentage and layer height is modelled based on
ASTM D638 (Fig. 4) for tensile testing and ASTM D256 for
Izod impact testing (Fig. 5).
2.3 Design of experiment (DOE)
and experimentation setup
The focus of the literature was to study mainly three pro-
cess parameters of 3D printing which affect the mechanical
Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69 65

Table 1  Process parameters for tensile test

Specimen Building direction Infill % Layer
height
(mm)

1 X-axis 50% 0.2

2 Y-axis 50% 0.2
3 Z-axis 50% 0.2
4 X-axis 20% 0.2
5 X-axis 50% 0.2
6 X-axis 80% 0.2
7 X-axis 50% 0.2
8 X-axis 50% 0.25
9 X-axis 50% 0.3

Table 2  Process parameters for Izod impact test

Specimen Building direction Infill % Layer
height
Fig. 4  Tensile test specimens as per ASTM D638 (mm)

1 X-axis 80% 0.2

2 Y-axis 80% 0.2
3 Z-axis 80% 0.2
4 X-axis 20% 0.2
5 X-axis 50% 0.2
6 X-axis 80% 0.2
7 X-axis 80% 0.2
8 X-axis 80% 0.25
9 X-axis 80% 0.3

of the printed layer. For example, printing samples with

Fig. 5  Izod test notched specimens as per ASTM D256
strength to a very large extent, which are building direc-
tion, infill percentage and layer height. These parameters
are selected based on the literature [11–13]. The effect of
these three parameters on tensile strength and Izod impact
strength of the specimens were investigated independently.
The building direction indicates the direction which is per-
pendicular to the heating bed of the printer or the plane
Z as building direction denote that the printed layers are
parallel to the X–Y plane. Infill percentage indicates how
full or hollow the printed part is where zero percent is a
shell and 100% is a solid. Layer height is the parameter
that controls the thickness of each layer.
Infill pattern was chosen as grid while shell thickness
was set to default 0.8 mm for all the specimens, the tem-
perature was kept 210 °C and print speed as 60 mm/s for
all the nine specimens. These parameters are kept constant
because they do not affect the strength to a large extent as
compared to the selected three parameters, i.e. building
direction, infill% and layer height [11].
The values of the processing parameters listed in
Tables 1 and 2 were used to set an experiment plan to
fabricate a total number of 9 samples for tensile and Izod
test with shell wall line count as 2 and 3, respectively.
The values in bold indicates which process parameter is
focused on for that particular sample. Each of these pro-
cessing parameters was investigated at a three-level scale
as shown in Tables 1 and 2.

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66 Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69

2.4 TOPSIS analysis
TOPSIS (technique for order preferences by similarity to
ideal solution) is a method used for solving multiple criteria
decisions [14, 15]. The objective of TOPSIS analysis is to
evaluate the alternatives by simultaneously measuring their
distances to the positive ideal solution (PIS) and to the nega-
tive ideal solution (NIS). TOPSIS was done in this experi-
ment to rank the set of process parameters from the highest
tensile strength and impact strength to lowest.
2.5 Experimental procedure
The parts were modelled using Solidworks 2016 and trans-
ferred to Cura Ultimaker in the STL file (standard tessella-
tion language) format. The parts were fabricated by Falcon
3D printer (shown in Fig. 2) assembled by Ypanx technolo-
gies pvt. Ltd. The dimensions were measured using ver-
nier calliper to find out the cross section of the fabricated
specimen. The tensile test method was ISO 1608 which was
performed on universal testing machine (UTM) of capacity
20 tonnes with cross-head speed 1.5 mm/min on dumbbell-
shaped specimen shown in Fig. 4 and the Izod impact test
was performed at JSS ATEN ME research lab using digital
automatic Izod impact testing machine on specimen shown
in the Fig. 5.
are given in Table 3. It has been observed that the building
direction parameter Z-axis results in the weakest direction.
This indicates that the interaction between layers is weaker
than in the molecular bonding of material in a single layer
(Fig. 6a). It also observed that a significant infill percent-
age shows improved strength. The higher infill percentages
improved the tensile strength by providing more material
to take the loads applied by the tensile machine, as shown
in Fig. 6b. However, increasing the infill percentage also
increases cost, time as well as the weight of the part. In
Fig. 6c, the tensile strength is shown to improve by increas-
ing layer height. This indicated that having lesser layers pro-
vides more durable printed parts.
The TOPSIS analysis was employed on the results
obtained and provided a preference list for the specimens
according to their strength, the strongest specimen was
ranked 1 and so on. This analysis helps us to decide the
printing parameter values according to our strength require-
ments. The rankings are shown in Table 4 below.
TOPSIS result shows that specimen with 80% infill,
building direction as X and layer height as 0.2 mm displayed
the highest tensile strength, but as soon as infill percent-
age dropped down to 50%, the specimen with highest layer
height over-powered the rest of the specimens; hence, with
50% infill, X building direction and 0.3-mm layer height,
specimen 9 was the second strongest, which is validated with
tensile results (Fig. 6).

3 Results and discussions 3.2 Izod impact test

3.1 Tensile test The second mechanical property tested was Izod impact test,
as CF is known to be one of the most strong and rigid mate-
All the specimens were tested to find out the maximum rials; hence, it was expected that the 3D-printed specimens
load they can withstand before reaching failure and results will show some good impact strength compared to normal

Table 3  Results of tensile test Specimen Building direction Infill % Layer height Max load (N) UTS (N/mm2)
of composite specimens (mm)

1 X-axis 50% 0.2 2160 27.69 ± 1.52

2 Y-axis 50% 0.2 2240 28.24 ± 1.81
3 Z-axis 50% 0.2 2040 25.82 ± 2.51
4 X-axis 20% 0.2 1960 25.04 ± 1.07
5 X-axis 50% 0.2 2160 27.69 ± 2.15
6 X-axis 80% 0.2 2800 35.54 ± 2.50
7 X-axis 50% 0.2 2160 27.69 ± 4.00
8 X-axis 50% 0.25 2560 32.32 ± 3.86
9 X-axis 50% 0.3 3640 46.26 ± 5.60

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Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69 67

Tensile Strength (MPa) Vs Tensile Strength (MPa) Vs Tensile Strength (MPa) Vs

Building Direcon Infill Percentage Layer Hieght
30 45 60
28.24 40 35.54 46.26
29 27.69 50
35

Tensile strength
Tensile strength
Tensile strength

28 27.69 32.32
30 25.04 40
27 25.82 25 27.69
30
26 20
15 20
25
10
24 5 10
23 0 0
X Axis Y Axis Z Axis 20% 50% 80% 0.2 0.25 0.3
Building direcon Infill percentage Layer height (mm)
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 6  Variation in tensile strength by changing a Building direction, b Infill %, c layer height

Impact Strength (kJ/m2) Vs Impact Strength (kJ/m2) Vs Impact Strength (kJ/m2)

Building Direcon Infill Percentage Vs Layer Hieght
7 6
4.92 6
6 4.67 4.67 4.67
5

Impact strength
Impact strength

5 4.06
5 3.93
Impact strength

4 4
4 2.82 2.95
1.96 3 3
3
2 2 2
1 1 1
0 0 0
X Axis Y Axis Z Axis 20% 50% 80% 0.2 0.25 0.3
Building direc on Infill percentage Layer height (mm)
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7  Variation in impact strength by changing a Building direction, b Infill percentage, c Layer height

Table 4  Ranking of specimens Specimens Building Infill Layer height Max Load UTS di+ di− Pi Rank
according to tensile strength Directions Percent-
using TOPSIS analysis age

1 X 50 0.2 2160 27.69 0.0754 0.0595 0.4410 5

2 Y 50 0.2 2240 28.24 0.0662 0.0822 0.5539 3
3 Z 50 0.2 2040 25.82 0.0973 0.0493 0.3362 6
4 X 20 0.2 1960 25.04 0.1531 0.0447 0.2259 7
5 X 50 0.2 2160 27.69 0.0754 0.0595 0.4410 5
6 X 80 0.2 2800 35.54 0.0457 0.0946 0.6742 1
7 X 50 0.2 2160 27.69 0.0754 0.0595 0.4410 5
8 X 50 0.25 2560 32.32 0.0669 0.0572 0.4609 4
9 X 50 0.30 3640 46.26 0.0585 0.0815 0.5821 2

di+ separation of each alternative from the positive ideal

di− separation of each alternative from the negative ideal
Pi relative closeness to ideal solution, higher Pi corresponds to higher rank

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Table 5  Test result of Izod test Similarly, this result was also ranked in Table 6 according
S. no. Direction Infill % Layer Izod impact Izod impact to TOPSIS method and specimen number 2 was strongest,
height energy (J) strength (kJ/ hence ranked 1 with 80% infill, Y building direction and
(mm) m 2) 0.2 mm layer height. In summary, the biggest factor to affect
impact strength was infill percentage.
1 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 ± 1.80
2 Y 80 0.2 0.40 4.92 ± 2.11
3 Z 80 0.2 0.16 1.96 ± 2.80
4 X 20 0.2 0.23 2.82 ± 1.10
4 Conclusion
5 X 50 0.2 0.24 2.95 ± 3.50
This paper examines the influence of FDM process param-
6 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 ± 0.85
eters on the characteristics of parts. The experiment inves-
7 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 ± 3.09
tigates the effect of infill percentage, building direction and
8 X 80 0.25 0.33 4.06 ± 2.92
layer height independently on mechanical properties of the
9 X 80 0.3 0.32 3.93 ± 2.02
parts. The following conclusions are as follows:
It was shown that the tensile property was influenced by
all three parameters but in case of infill percentage and layer
printing materials like ABS (Acrylonitrile, Butadiene, and height, there is a value above which the effects are signifi-
Styrene) and PLA. The test results are shown in Table 5. cantly higher as compared to lower values.
Unlike in the tensile test, here Y direction showed the The highest tensile strength has been obtained when layer
highest impact energy, but as expected, Z direction was height is 0.25 mm and infill percentage is 80%.
weakest as the interaction between layers is weaker than While in Izod test results, it has been observed that the
the molecular bonding of material in a single layer, shown layer height does not affect strength that much; whereas,
in Fig. 7a. There was no significant difference in impact building direction and infill percentage affects strength to
strength when infill percentages were low but at 80% infill a large extent. This study was focused on finding the best
percentage, impact strength increased significantly because alternative from the given process parametric values for
of reduced voids and there is more material to absorb impact 3D-printed products requiring strength in either impact or
energy as observed in Fig. 7b. In this case, layer height tensile characteristics.
increment reduced strength; 0.2-mm layered specimen was The set of process parameters that provide optimum
more substantial than 0.3-mm layer. results according to TOPSIS are: 80% infill, 0.2 mm layer
height and X building direction for tensile strength, whereas,
80% infill, 0.2 mm layer height and Y building direction,
which is also validated with experimental results.

Table 6  Rank of specimens Specimens Building Infill Layer height Izod Izod di+ di− Pi Rank
according to impact strength Direc- Percent- Impact Impact
using TOPSIS analysis tions age Energy strength

1 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 0.0371 0.1123 0.7516 2

2 Y 80 0.2 0.40 4.92 0 0.1132 1 1
3 Z 80 0.2 0.16 1.96 0.1117 0.0726 0.3939 6
4 X 20 0.2 0.23 2.82 0.0951 0.0536 0.3689 7
5 X 50 0.2 0.24 2.95 0.0744 0.0656 0.4685 5
6 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 0.0371 0.1123 0.7516 2
7 X 80 0.2 0.38 4.67 0.0371 0.1123 0.7516 2
8 X 80 0.25 0.33 4.06 0.0471 0.0566 0.6722 3
9 X 80 0.30 0.32 3.93 0.0572 0.0929 0.6189 4

di+ separation of each alternative from the positive ideal

di− separation of each alternative from the negative ideal
Pi relative closeness to ideal solution, higher Pi corresponds to higher rank

Acknowledgements  We would like to thank R&D Labs, JSS Acad-

emy of technical education, NOIDA for letting us carry out the

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Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2021) 6:63–69 69
experimentations and also Ypanx technologies pvt ltd. for providing
their top-notch service.
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