3D printing is state-of-the-art manufacturing technology. In addition to prototyping, the development of this technology allows the parts produced by this technology to be used as fully functional assemblies. There are different 3D printing technologies (Fused Deposition Modeling, FDM, Selective Laser Sintering, SLS, Stereolithography, SLA and others), and different materials can be used (polymer filaments, polymer and composite powders for sintering, photopolymers). This paper presents the process of design and fabrication of small load bearing structures by FDM and verification of its mechanical properties, by using three-point bending test. The printing parameters and setup of the three-point bending test were analysed from aspects of flexural strength and final bending angle that was determined experimentally and by calculation.
We have studied an application of the Voronoi tessellation method in the modeling of open-cell aluminium foam under uniaxial compressive loading. The Voronoi code was merged with computer-aided design (CAD) for converting the polyhedral model into an irregular open-cell cellular structure to create porous samples for compression testing simulations. Numerical simulations of the uniaxial compression uniformly over the upper surface of the sample in the z-axis direction at a constant 20 N load was realised. Samples with three different porosities (30%, 60% and 80%) were studied. A nonlinear elasto-plastic material model with perfect plasticity, without hardening, based on the von Mises yield criterion was applied below 10% strain. Corresponding stress–strain curves were observed and the influence of porosity on deformation mechanism was discussed. Samples with higher porosity exhibited significantly higher normal stress under the same load, and increased stress plateaus. An increase of porosity produced an increase of both compressive and tensile stresses and struts exhibited complex stress fields. Voronoi-based modeling was in accordance with experimental results in the literature in the case of the quasi-static condition and linear elastic region (below 1% strain). Further study is necessary to enable the simulation of real dynamic behaviour under all deformation regimes by using the Voronoi tessellation method.
The procedure for reuse of finite element method (FEM) programs for heat transfer and structure analysis to solve advanced thermo-mechanical problems is presented as powerful algorithm applicable for coupling of other physical fields (magnetic, fluid flow, etc.). In this case, nonlinear Block-Gauss-Seidel partitioned algorithm strongly couples the heat transfer and structural FEM programs by a component-based software engineering. Component template library provides possibility to exchange the data between the components which solve the corresponding subproblems. The structural component evaluates the dissipative energy induced by inelastic strain. The heat transfer component computes the temperature change due to the dissipation. The convergence is guaranteed by posing the global convergence criterion on the previously locally converged coupled variables. This enables reuse of software and allows the numerical simulation of thermo-sensitive problems.Communicated by Andreas Öchsner.V. Dunić (B) · N. Busarac · V. Slavković · R. Slavković · M. Živković
This study was conducted on different models of biodegradable SMP (shape-memory polymer) scaffolds. A comparison was conducted utilizing a basic FDM (fused deposition modeling)/MEX (material extrusion) printer with a standard printing technique and a novel, modified, four-axis printing method with a PLA (poly lactic acid) polymer as the printing material. This way of making the 4D-printed BVS (biodegradable vascular stent) made it possible to achieve high-quality surfaces due to the difference in printing directions and improved mechanical properties—tensile testing showed a doubling in the elongation at break when using the four-axis-printed specimen compared to the regular printing, of 8.15 mm and 3.92 mm, respectfully. Furthermore, the supports created using this method exhibited a significant level of shape recovery following thermomechanical programming. In order to test the shape-memory effect, after the thermomechanical programming, two approaches were applied: one approach was to heat up the specimen after unloading it inside temperature chamber, and the other was to heat it in a warm bath. Both approaches led to an average recovery of the original height of 99.7%, while the in-chamber recovery time was longer (120 s) than the warm-bath recovery (~3 s) due to the more direct specimen heating in the latter case. This shows that 4D printing using the newly proposed four-axis printing is an effective, promising technique that can be used in the future to make biodegradable structures from SMP.
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