Interlaminar toughening approaches for additively manufactured liquid crystal polymers

Liquid crystalline polymers have recently attracted attention for their great tensile properties. However, their interlaminar fracture toughness is low. To solve this, toughening approaches inspired by Nature are applied, exploiting the shaping freedom of fused deposition modelling. Three approaches are studied: the matchstick approach, z...

5-Axis Additive Manufacturing of Hydrogen Pressure Vessels: With Liquid Crystal Polymers

Traditional manufacturing techniques for hydrogen pressure vessels have inherent constraints in the possible geometrical and structural optimisation. Using 5-axis Additive Manufacturing (AM) allows for a far greater shaping freedom. This thesis will provide a new manufacturing method for pressure vessels with 5-axis AM. Using the highly...

Simulated Morphogenesis using Ghost Layer Optimization for Additive Manufacturing

Morphogenesis of living organisms could be used as inspiration to digitally augment the reinforcement of structures. The design space in terms of fiber orientation was enlarged to facilitate more complex patches with improved performance that can be 3D printed using a ghost ply optimisation. Simulations performed on optimized open-hole tensile...

Additive Manufacturing of Liquid Crystal Polymers: Interlayer features: formation and impact on interlaminar shear strength

Recent findings have highlighted the potential of a 3D-printable high-strength Liquid Crystal Polymer, whose anisotropy can be fostered for topology optimization intents. The mesostructure of a 3D-printed liquid crystal polymer is studied: the observation of interlayer features under the form of regular notches or spiraling patterns swirls is...