Experimental Study on Bending Fatigue of 3D-Printed Specimens Fabricated via Fused Deposition Modeling

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Ammar watheg Younus 1
Ali Hassani 1
Abbas Zolfaghari 2
1 Department of Solid Design, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran
2 Department of Manufacturing, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran
10.22034/stme.2025.500784.1101
Abstract
Polymer components manufactured using additive manufacturing (AM) methods have many applications in various industries. Different parameters affect the quality of parts’ printing, and subsequently their mechanical and surface properties. In this paper, the effect of 3D printing factors including layer height, printing speed, and temperature on the fatigue life of PLA specimens printed by the Fused Deposition Modeling is investigated. Layer heights of 0.2, 0.25, and 0.3 mm, printing speeds of 1000, 1400, and 1800 mm/min, and printing temperatures of 205, 215, and 225°C, all with an infill density of 100%, are considered. For this purpose, 15 different configurations were created in Minitab using the Box-Behnken method for laboratory evaluation. The fatigue life of specimens was obtained using a SANTAM rotational fatigue machine at a constant speed of 5 Hz. Then, using linear and nonlinear second-order regression models and fitting the experimental data, the fatigue life estimation function was extracted using the scikit-learn package in Python. Studies show that the results obtained from nonlinear regression are reliable and do not suffer from overfitting. The results also show that as the printing speed and layer height increase, the fatigue life of specimens decreases due to the reduction in the mechanical and surface quality of the samples. In addition, although the printing temperature does not have a large effect on the fatigue life; its changes are nonlinear, and using nonlinear regression estimation, the optimal temperature of 213 degrees in the printing temperature range of 205 to 225 degrees Celsius has been obtained.
Keywords
3D printing
PLA polymer
Rotating fatigue test
Fatigue life estimation
Linear and non-linear regressions
Subjects
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Science and Technology in Mechanical Engineering
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 5
January 2025
Pages 119-136

  • Receive Date 27 January 2025
  • Revise Date 16 March 2025
  • Accept Date 30 March 2025
  • First Publish Date 30 March 2025
  • Publish Date 30 March 2025