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Additive manufacturing (AM) is a broad definition of various techniques to produce layer-by-layer objects made of different materials. In this paper, a comprehensive review of laser-based technologies for polymers, including powder bed fusion processes [e.g. selective laser sintering (SLS)] and vat photopolymerisation [e.g. stereolithography (SLA)], is presented, where both the techniques employ a laser source to either melt or cure a raw polymeric material. The aim of the review is twofold: (1) to present the principal theoretical models adopted in the literature to simulate the complex physical phenomena involved in the transformation of the raw material into AM objects and (2) to discuss the influence of process parameters on the physical final properties of the printed objects and in turn on their mechanical performance. The models being presented simulate: the thermal problem along with the thermally activated bonding through sintering of the polymeric powder in SLS; the binding induced by the curing mechanisms of light-induced polymerisation of the liquid material in SLA. Key physical variables in AM objects, such as porosity and degree of cure in SLS and SLA respectively, are discussed in relation to the manufacturing process parameters, as well as to the mechanical resistance and deformability of the objects themselves. Graphic abstract

The macroscopic mechanical response of polymers can be traced down to the microscale physics of the network by using a statistical approach for the description of the configuration state of the polymer chains. In this paper we present a micromechanical model to capture the macroscopic behavior of polymers by tracking the evolution of a distribution function describing chain configurations, more specifically the statistics of the end-to-end distance on the network chains. Damage, manifested in the softening and hysteresis under cyclic loading, is accounted for through the scission of chains, whose occurrence is evaluated on the basis of the probability of failure, also settled in the configuration space. The proposed micromechanical model can easily accommodate also the mechanics of dynamic network with reversible cross-links, thereby providing a general and physics-based approach to the study of polymers and polymer-like materials.

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13A channelized debris flow is usually represented by a mixture of solid particles of various sizes 14 and water flowing along a laterally confined inclined channel-shaped region to an unconfined area 15 where it slows down and spreads out into a flat-shaped mass.

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