Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Fatigue Behavior of Polylactic acid Components Made by Additive Manufacturing Method

Additive manufacturing includes emerging methods that with reduced production time and ability to produce parts with complex geometry, are now widely used in variety of industries. Fused deposition modeling process is one of the most popular methods of additive manufacturing and so far, a lot of research has been done to model and improve the mechanical behavior of the parts produced by this method. The purpose of this research is to conduct an experimental study to model and investigate the effect of fused deposition modelling process variable on fatigue behavior of poly-lactic acid components, along with the development of numerical tools to predict this behavior. This paper uses the Taguchi algorithm to design experiments for experimental study. By performing fatigue testing on the sample and analyzing the result, the optimal value of the desired variable, as well as their effects are determined that the variable of fill density, nozzle temperature and layer thickness have the highest impact on fatigue life, respectively. The finite element simulation is performed by assuming assumption and its results are evaluated with the values of the optimized sample fatigue test. The result of experimental modeling and finite element simulation show that the models presented predict the poly-lactic acid components parts fraction with R-Sq 96.3% and 98.7% fatigue behavior, respectively.