Effect of Infill Density on Part Deformation: A Simulation-Based Approach with Layered CAD Model of Material Extrusion Printed Part

Additive manufacturing (AM), a three-dimensional printing process, involves layer upon layer addition of material. In the most acceptable material extrusion (ME) AM process, a solid computer-aided design (CAD) model is split into slices, and the 3D printer prints the part in layers based on a toolpath defined by software. In an actual instance, the printed part is a clone of the solid CAD model in layers. The process is influenced by various parameters that increase the number of experiments for the best results, and simulation with a solid CAD model is not an accurate approach. To simulate the ME printed parts, it is essential to consider the deposited layer profile, infill patterns, densities, etc., and a layered CAD model should be simulated. In this chapter, the layered CAD model was designed using a geometric scripting method from the G code file data. The difference between the solid CAD model and layered CAD model is shown, and the effect of infill densities on the part deformation is presented by simulating the middle layer and complete model of simple rectangular flat bars under tensile and cantilever load conditions, respectively. The results show that the solid CAD model differs from the layered CAD model, and the part deformation decreases as the infill density increases.