Estimations of the effective Young's modulus of specimens prepared by fused filament fabrication

Published

April 5, 2021

Author(s)

Lichen Fang, Yishu Yan, Ojaswi Agarwal, Jonathan Seppala, Kalman D. Migler, Thao D. Nguyen, Kevin Hemker, Sung Hoon Kang

Abstract

The elastic response of homogeneous isotropic materials is most commonly represented by their Young's modulus (E), but geometric variability associated with additive manufacturing results in materials that are neither homogeneous nor isotropic. Here we investigated methods to estimate the effective elastic modulus (Eeff) of samples fabricated by fused filament fabrication. We conducted finite element analysis (FEA) on printed samples based on material properties and CT-scanned geometries. The analysis revealed how the layer structure of a specimen altered the internal stress distribution and the resulting Eeff. We also investigated different empirical methods to estimate Eeff as guides. We envision the findings from our study can provide guidelines for modulus estimation of as-printed specimens, with the potential of applying to other extrusion-based additive manufacturing technologies.

Citation

Scripta Materialia

Volume

42

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2021.101983

Local Download

Keywords

extrusion, fused filament fabrication, tension test, effective Young’s modulus

Citation

Fang, L. , Yan, Y. , Agarwal, O. , Seppala, J. , Migler, K. , Nguyen, T. , Hemker, K. and Kang, S. (2021), Estimations of the effective Young's modulus of specimens prepared by fused filament fabrication, Scripta Materialia, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2021.101983, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=930009 (Accessed October 13, 2025)