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Review
. 2019 Mar 18;12(6):895.
doi: 10.3390/ma12060895.

Characterization of the Mechanical Properties of FFF Structures and Materials: A Review on the Experimental, Computational and Theoretical Approaches

Enrique Cuan-Urquizo  1   2 , Eduardo Barocio  3 , Viridiana Tejada-Ortigoza  4 , R Byron Pipes  5 , Ciro A Rodriguez  6   7 , Armando Roman-Flores  8
Affiliations
Review

Characterization of the Mechanical Properties of FFF Structures and Materials: A Review on the Experimental, Computational and Theoretical Approaches

Enrique Cuan-Urquizo et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

The increase in accessibility of fused filament fabrication (FFF) machines has inspired the scientific community to work towards the understanding of the structural performance of components fabricated with this technology. Numerous attempts to characterize and to estimate the mechanical properties of structures fabricated with FFF have been reported in the literature. Experimental characterization of printed components has been reported extensively. However, few attempts have been made to predict properties of printed structures with computational models, and a lot less work with analytical approximations. As a result, a thorough review of reported experimental characterization and predictive models is presented with the aim of summarizing applicability and limitations of those approaches. Finally, recommendations on practices for characterizing printed materials are given and areas that deserve further research are proposed.

Keywords: Fused Deposition Modeling; Fused Filament Fabrication; additive manufacturing; mechanical characterization.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic of the fused filament fabrication technology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
SEM images of FFF parts showing: (a) the cross-sectional area of extruded filaments in a two layers array; and (b) stacking of several layers.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Ishikawa diagram showing the main parameters that have a role on the resulting mechanical properties of FFF.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Main structural parameters studied in the mechanical characterization, including the print orientations, raster angle, number of contours, and rasters cross-section.
Figure 5
Figure 5
A schematic representation of filament cross-sectional areas, showing the difference between positive and negative gaps.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Schematic representation of a unidirectional stack of FFF layers.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Schematic representation of the FFF raster lattice structure. Rasters are represented with cylinders, and the unit cell of such lattice is shown as an extraction from the lattice.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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