Fracture Improvement by Reinforcing the Structure of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene Parts Manufactured by Fused Deposition Modeling

Abstract Fused deposition modeling deposits a filament layer by layer and according to a trajectory. Based on stress criterion for filament deposition, this work suggests reproducing the principal directions of the stress in the sample through the control of the filament direction. A number of compact-tension (C-T) specimens have been printed with and without respecting this criterion. The fracture toughness test of these specimens was realized to compare the results. The results show that the suggested criterion leads to an improvement of 30% in the fracture toughness. Digital images correlation has been extensively used to study the local strain field in the specimens. Strain mapping reveals an important change in fracture behavior. The modification of filament direction leads to “ductile-like behavior” in crack extension, which is characterized by a large deformation zone associated with a slow crack growth rate during crack propagation.