Additively Manufactured Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymeric (GFRP) Structures for High Performance Applications

Recently, significantly increased demand for new lightweight products inspired by reduction of the production costs and other resources allows additive manufacturing (AM) to occupy an increasingly important place in the global manufacturing (GM) environment. Additive manufacturing technologies are important because can help to reduce delivery time, and cost, and improve the design. Technologies long time associated with the production of polymeric parts for visualization now are showing very huge potential in the manufacturing of prototypes and small series of products from ceramics, metals and, composite materials. Moreover, 3D printed plastic parts have relatively poor mechanical properties and rarely can be used as structural parts for high-performance applications. Therefore, additive manufacturing of composite structures reinforced with short and especially long fibers is increasingly important in the modern manufacturing environment. This research focuses on the additive manufacturing of continuous glass fiber-reinforced polymeric (GFRP) structures. As a matrix material, polylactic acid (PLA) was used. New developed method for the impregnation of glass fibers and 3D printing process of the glass fiber reinforced structures is introduced in the article. Material extrusion process as a base to design an efficient AM manufacturing method was used. Developed methods were validated and samples for mechanical performance investigation of GFRP structures were printed. Tensile and flexural tests showed significant improvement of the mechanical properties of composites compared with the pure plastic parts. For example, the average tensile and flexural strength of the samples were 263 MPa and 145 MPa, while pure PLA results are only 46.6 MPa and 85.1 MPa respectively.