Thermal, Tensile and Fatigue Behaviors of the PA6, Short Carbon Fiber-Reinforced PA6, and Continuous Glass Fiber-Reinforced PA6 Materials in Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)

Utilization of additive manufacturing (AM) is widespread in many industries due to its unique capabilities. These material extrusion methods have been developed extensively for manufacturing polymer and polymer composite materials. The raw material in filament form are liquefied in the liquefier section and are consequently extruded and deposited onto the bed platform. The designed parts are manufactured layer by layer. Therefore, there is a gradient of temperature due to the existence of the cyclic reheating related to each deposited layer by the newer deposited ones. Thus, the stated temperature evolution will have a significant role on the rheological behavior of the materials during this manufacturing process. Furthermore, each processing parameter can affect this cyclic temperature profile. In this study, different processing parameters concerning the manufacturing process of polymer and polymer composite samples have been evaluated according to their cyclic temperature profiles. In addition, the manufactured parts by the additive manufacturing process (the extrusion method) can behave differences compared to the manufactured parts by conventional methods. Accordingly, we attempted to experimentally investigate the rheological behavior of the manufactured parts after the manufacturing process. Thus the three-point bending fatigue and the tensile behavior of the manufactured samples were studied. Accordingly, the effect of the reinforcement existence and its direction and density on the tensile behavior of the manufactured samples were studied. Therefore, this study is helpful for manufacturers and designers to understand the behaviors of the materials during the FFF process and subsequently the behaviors of the manufactured parts as a function of the different processing parameters.