Mechanical Analysis of Short Fiber Composites Manufactured by Inverted Stereolithography

Abstract

Additive manufacturing, or “3D printing”, is a rapidly expanding technology that produces components with complex geometry using computer aided design software. Unfortunately, an intrinsic lack of mechanical properties inhibits 3D printed parts from being used in many load bearing applications. In this study, glass fibers were introduced to reinforce an acrylic resin to increase the elastic modulus of inverted stereolithography (ISLA) printed specimens. The elastic modulus of the resultant short glass fiber composites increased with increasing fiber content, up to 10 vol% fiber addition. However, flow induced fiber alignment caused the high aspect ratio reinforcements to orient transversely to the applied load. This significantly limited the contribution of the fibers to the overall modulus of the composite. A variety of flow diversion techniques were implemented, but the ISLA workflow did not produce a fiber reinforced part that had a superior elastic modulus to that of existing particle reinforced composites.