Improving Strength of 3D Printed Parts through Stress-aligned Print Paths

Using highly anisotropic Liquid Crystal Polymers

Master thesis (2021)

Authors

N. Faber Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

K. Masania Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies - Aerospace Engineering (supervisor 1)
Silvan Gantenbein ETH Zürich (supervisor 2)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2021 Nick Faber
3D Printing Manufacturing Stress analysis Nonplanar
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Published Date

26-11-2021

Language

English

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Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has made it possible to manufacture parts whose shape complexity was unfeasible with other traditional methods by depositing material layer-wise. However, this planar layer-wise deposition strategy can be restrictive for the part's properties. However, the anisotropic behaviour can also be embraced and used as an advantage. Therefore, in this thesis a different method is implemented: the Stress-Aligned Printing method (SA), in which print-paths are oriented along the principal stress directions of a part's load case. To implement this method, a new 5-axis 3D printer was developed. An algorithm that converts results from a Topology- and Anistropy- optimization (TAO) to G-code was created. In a case study for a jet engine bracket, an improvement of 156% in ultimate tensile strength was found, while the weight was reduced from 41 g to 20 g.