Material models and finite analysis of additively printed polymer composites

Abstract

There are urgent needs to characterize and model the mechanical property of additively manufactured composite materials, known as the digital materials, for the computational design and simulation. In this study, most utilized digital material samples, which are the mixture of base polymers, Tango Black+ and Vero White+, by PolyJet (Stratasys) are chosen. Four polynomial models (Neo Hookean model, and two-, three-, and five-parameter Mooney–Rivlin models) are used to fit mechanical tensile test results up to 30% of strain. The material models were adopted in the finite element analysis simulating the tensile test to validate their accuracy. The simulation results based on the two-parameter Mooney–Rivlin model predict the stress at 30% strain with small errors (8.2, 10.5, 0.9, 5.0, and 8.0 for Tango Black+, DM40, DM50, DM60, and DM70, respectively). Additionally, scanning electron microscopy was utilized to analyze the fracture surface of the base materials (Tango Black+ and Vero White+) and the digital materials.