Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Study of impact and fatigue on 3D printed composites

Nikhil Niteen Berde ⇑, Sudarshan B. Sanap, Sandeep G. Thorat
Mechanical Engineering (DESIGN) MIT-ADT University, Pune, Maharashtra

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: When materials are subjected to impacts, the toughness, stiffness and structural integrity of the material
Available online xxxx are drastically reduced; resulting in catastrophic failure or life-threatening failure of the structure in
extreme scenarios. 3D printed composites parts made out of carbon fibre-reinforcement are used in
Keywords: the design and construction of race cars, drones, high performance sporting equipment and many other
3D printed composites applications that require lightweight but strong materials to enhance product performance.
Low velocity impact Fibre reinforced composites (FRPs) are widely used in the aerospace industry e.g. Boeing 787 is made
Damage modes
up of 50% of the composites. In the working and service life of an aircraft, the aircraft may undergo a low
Fatigue
NDT
velocity impact damage (e.g. Small stone impact during take-off, tool drop during servicing). Contrary to
the metals, this impact produces damage that start from back side of the composites; which is difficult to
inspect. Further, this impact damage grows due to fatigue and can cause catastrophic failure. Taking in
consideration of future scope there is possibility of using 3D printed composites for the aircraft. These
3D printed composites may have different type of damage modes compared to the normal composites.
The aim of this article is to study the impact damage at low velocity and fatigue failure on 3D printed
composites and the mode of damage in the composite, these damages can be detected by using various
‘Non-destructive test’ (NDT) methods like thermography, laser vibrometer etc.
Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Materials and System Engineering.

1. Introduction Normalised and reduced cost of manufacturing process of com-

posites helped in growth and increased use of 3d printing of com-
3D printing of composite is a upcoming technology, but one posites. Different conventional methods of composite production
with huge potential to change the way composites are made. have drawbacks compared to 3D printing. Conventional method
According to a Smart Tech Analysis report, 3D printing composites needs expensive tooling and equipment e.g., Moulds, involves
will grow nearly 10 billion dollar business worldwide within the manual layup of composite material layers. Hence manufacturing
next 10 years. composite in traditional way asks for heavy capital, skill labour
What is a composite? and intensive resources. Therefore, difficult to scale for large mass
Composites is usually made up of a core base material known as or volume production. Whereas 3D printing has automated process
matrix and a reinforcing material like fiber, like chopped fibers or and needs manual intervention only in the beginning of the
continuous fiber. Non-reinforced polymers have lower strength process.
as well as stiffness as compared to composite material. In some
cases, it can even substitute metals such as aluminum. These
boosted material characteristics make composites ideal materials 2. Techniques
for tooling and end-use applications in a wide range of industries,
like automotive, aerospace, industrial goods etc. In traditional way as shown in Fig. 1 the composites were made
What are the pros of composite 3D printing? by systematic layering of the matrix and reinforcement of various
combination of the two. In this type of manufacturing technique,
the time requirement, labor and the factor of human handing is
more which may reduce the integrity of the final product.
⇑ Corresponding author. In 3D printed composites as shown in Fig. 2 the reinforcement
E-mail address: nikhilberde41@gmail.com (N.N. Berde). material is coated with the matrix material. For the production of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.04.330
2214-7853/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Materials and System Engineering.

Please cite this article as: Nikhil Niteen Berde, S.B. Sanap and S.G. Thorat, Study of impact and fatigue on 3D printed composites, Materials Today: Proceed-
ings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.04.330
Nikhil Niteen Berde, S.B. Sanap and S.G. Thorat Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

and specimen. In their experimental test rig a digital oscilla-

tor, time gates impactor counter and specimen holdings
were used. For the velocity measurement two sets of photo-
transistors and light producing diodes are used. They choose
pendulum impact as it had a edge over other impact testing
due to the ease of accurately controlling the varying impact
energies. From the experiment they stated for low velocity
impact test, Total impact energy may not be sufficient to
use for material characterization. Delamination and back
face damage, called as 2 prominent modes of failure can be
seen on epoxy panel. [1]
(ii) Umme Kalsoom et la. In this paper the authors used carbon
and glass fibre reinforced thermoplastics, they performed
various tests such as tensile, indentation and flexural on
the CFRTP and GFRTP composites and were compared. They
realised that unlike the conventional method of layup pro-
Fig. 1. Traditional way of making composite. cess it was cheaper to produce a prototype and was very
time efficient if the product was 3D printed, but they rea-
lised that the 3D printing method will not replace the con-
composites two different types of methods can be used for thermo- ventional method due to its low deposition rate, which can
plastics and thermosets. also be tackled by having multiple nozzles to print the com-
posite. 3D printing method was more efficient in having to
3. Objectives produce more tedious and complex parts. [2]
(iii) L.G. Blok et al. in this paper the authors have presented the
 To study the impact damage at low velocity and fatigue failure 3D printing composite parts process, with the performance
on 3D printed composites. of the two most advanced and common solutions currently
 To study the mode of damage in the composite. used which were benchmarked with mechanical optical
 Learning the experimental setup and results used in the previ- testing. Nylon reinforced printing of short fibre (~0.1 mm)
ous papers was carried out using open-source FFF printer and for con-
tinuous fibre was done using MarkOne 3D printer. They
4. Literature survey noted that the tensile strength and stiffness of continuous
fibre printed parts were 986Mpa and 64Gpa respectively,
(i) In a paper by Peter O. Sjoblom et al. Author In this paper which was greater than compared to short fibre reinforced
explained need for Experimental Testing to study impact nylon parts. They realised that there was a major disadvan-
and its outcome on composite materials in order to excel tage with regards to continuous fibre placement and cre-
understanding of effect of impact. In the paper the authors ation of voids during the printing of 3D printing the
describe a very versatile low velocity pendulum impact tes- composites for various complex shapes. To overcome this
ter setup and data for graphite fibre/thermoset and fibre/ back draw, they suggested that above critical length of fibre,
thermoplastic matrix. They acknowledged that impact short fibres reinforced with thermoplastic filament can help
energy is not sufficient to predict the effect of an impact. to yield mechanical properties. Effect is same as of continu-
They found out that the output of the structure depends ous fibre printing providing better quality of reinforced short
on velocity and geometry of the test material of impactor fibre filament [3]

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the 3D printing system of continuous carbon fibre-reinforced polymer composites for (a) thermoplastics and (b) thermosets.

2
Nikhil Niteen Berde, S.B. Sanap and S.G. Thorat Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

PA11 is a totally bio-based that can be reinforced with cellulosic

fibres, it has enough tensile strength, as well as stiffness, to replace
GF-reinforced polypropylene. HEXR tested their product to find out
hoe effect their product was. The product was tested using to
method: EN-1078: Linear Impact and also Oblique Impact as linear
does not count for the head rotation at impact. These test wear
conducted at 22 km/h i.e at 6.1 m/s as to be at a low velocity
impact(10 m/s). The output of the test results were that HEXR hel-
met is 26% effective which is more than the best help available in
the market.

6. Conclusion

In this study, 3D printed composites were studies and some

important conclusions were noted. The 3D printed composite
showed more strength than PLA and ABS. The tensile strength of
3D printed composites is higher than PLA and ABS. The most com-
monly used fibre for reinforcement is carbon fibre and fibre glass.
3D printed composite at low velocity do not have a dent or a frac-
Fig. 3. Representation of the continuous FRAM.
ture which can be seen with naked eye whereas the damage to it is
done on the inner surface or there is a inter laminar defect. The
(iv) Wenfeng Hao et al. the authors used epoxy resin E-54(616) continuous fibre reinforcement had better results than short fibres.
as the matrix and carbon fibre HF10,3000 fibre in a bundle.
They performed tensile and 3 point bending test using uni- Declaration of Competing Interest
versal testing machine. To measure the strain evolution of
the sample during the test they used digital imaging. They The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
stated that the tensile strength of reinforced thermoset cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
was around 792.8Mpa and where as tensile strength of com- to influence the work reported in this paper.
posite with continuous fibre was higher. [4]
(v) V) Astrit imeri et al. in their paper they have concluded Acknowledgements
about two different experiments. One was fibre orientations
at 0°, 45°, 90° the fibre volume fraction were 0.25–0.50 and I express my profound thanks to my Guide and Head, Depart-
the fibre material was FG in second test isotropic and con- ment of Mechanical Engineering MIT School of Engineering, MIT-
centric infills were considered. Concentric infill rings were ADT University, Pune Prof. Dr. Sudarshan Sanap for his expert guid-
added about the border of the specimen. The isotropic infills ance, encouragement and inspiration during this article work. I am
were added in unidirectional of the specimen. They printed very thankful Prof. Dr. Sandeep G Thorat for is guidance and all
the composite with commercially available 3D printer with kinds of help to complete my Article work. I am grateful to Prof.
dual extrusion head with 2 nozzle for matrix and reinforce- Dr. Kishore Ravande, Principal, MIT School of Engineering, MIT-
ment material as shown in Fig. 3. They input variable they ADT University, Pune, for providing me the facilities to carry out
noticed by trail and error method were amplitude, frequency my article work. I also thank all the faculty members in the depart-
average load, which were controlled by Multipurpose Test ment for their support and advice. I am very much grateful and
ware interface. thankful to my Parents for their immense love, affection, help,
(vi) Their work concluded that 0° specimens accomplish best cooperation and encouragement to complete this course. Finally,
results in uniaxial tension–tension loads, with zero ring a special thanks to all my classmates and friends who helped and
carbon-fibre being the strongest. Also, 45°specimens was encouraged me to complete successfully my dissertation work.
the most ductile. They found that the best gripping pressure
was 4Mpa. [5] References

[1] P.O. Sjoblom, J.T. Hartness, T.M. Cordell, On Low-Velocity Impact Testing of
5. Case study Composite Materials, J. Compos. Mater. 22 (1) (1988) 30–52.
[2] U. Kalsoom, P.N. Nesterenko, B. Paull, Recent developments in 3D printable
Taking HEXR helmet as my case study which is a helmet for composite materials, RSC Adv. 6 (65) (2016) 60355–60371.
[3] L.G. Blok, M.L. Longana, H. Yu, B.K.S. Woods, An investigation into 3D printing of
cyclist. The helmets that are available in the market are made from fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites, Addit. Manuf. 22 (2018) 176–186.
expanded polystyrene foam which is limited only up to 30% effec- [4] W. Hao, Y.e. Liu, H. Zhouc, H. Chen, D. Fang, Preparation and characterization of
tiveness. As per studies the best design for a helmet is a honey- 3D printed continuous carbon fibre reinforced thermosetting composites,
Polym. Test. 65 (2018) 29–34.
comb shape as honeycombs have the highest crush strength to [5] Astrit Imeri, Ismail Fidan. Fatigue Life Prediction of Composites and Composite
weight ratio. 3D printing helps us to achieve this shape with ease. Structures. Second edition. 335-348.
HEXR have manufactured their helmet using Polyamide 11 (PA11).