*WINNER* Investigation of the thermal properties of various short carbon fiber reinforced polymers in Fused Filament Fabrication process

Abstract

A considerable amount of literature has been published on the thermal properties of the additively manufactured polymers. However, there has been no study focused on the effect of the reinforced fiber in various matrix materials to measure the thermal properties of such additively manufactured parts. The aim of this research is to explore the influence of various matrix materials, numerically and experimentally, on the thermal conductivity, thermal strain and degree of healing in matrix materials of PETG, PC/PBT, ABS and Nylon. The anisotropic behavior of the composites is also evaluated by changing the build direction. This work also attempts to simulate the temperature evolution in the printed materials. In order to do this, 3D implicit finite difference method is constructed using element activation method. The results obtained are important in reporting the relationship between short carbon fibers and different polymers. Our research group has reported valuable findings on continuous fiber reinforced additive manufacturing processes. The current findings of our group for the thermal properties of short carbon fiber reinforced filaments performed in this study will be benchmarked to differentiate the pros and cons of both technologies.