A Particle Element Approach for Modelling the 3D Printing Process of Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites

Abstract

This paper presents a new numerical approach for modelling the 3D printing process of fibre reinforced polymer composites by fused deposition modelling (FDM). The approach is based on the coupling between two particle methods, namely smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and discrete element method (DEM). The coupled SPH-DEM model has distinctive advantages in dealing with the free surface flow, large deformation of fibres, and/or fibre-fibre interaction that are involved in the FDM process. A numerical feasibility study is carried out to demonstrate its capability for both short and continuous fibre reinforced polymer composites, with promising results achieved for the rheological flow and fibre orientation and deformation.