Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a promising technology for production of fiber-reinforced composite parts with complex geometries. Continuous Fiber Reinforced Additively Manufactured (CFRAM) parts are becoming more prominent due to their mechanical performance, light weight, and recyclability. CFRAM components are lighter, yet they are strong materials with a wide range of potential applications in the automotive industry, aerospace, medical tools, and sports goods. The wide range of applications of these novel materials justifies the need to study their properties. Tensile is one of the most important tests to evaluate the mechanical performance of CFRAM parts. In this paper, a comprehensive study is conducted on tensile properties of CFRAM components. The composite parts are printed using a dual nozzle 3D printing machine and their tensile performance is investigated. Furthermore, the effect of fiber type, fiber content, infill density, infill pattern, and layer thickness on tensile properties was studied. Nylon was used as the matrix and Carbon fiber (CF), fiberglass (FG), and Kevlar were used as reinforcing agents. Microstructural analysis was conducted to investigate the fracture mechanism, internal morphology, interlayer adhesion, and the printing quality of specimens. Finally, a comparative study is conducted on the price and printing time of CFRAM parts. It is observed that fiber inclusion increases the tensile strength up to 2200%; moreover, increasing the fiber content improves the tensile performance of composite. The results obtained demonstrate that CF-reinforced parts have better performance compared to FG and Kevlar-reinforced components. The results show that CFRAM parts have potential to replace metals and conventional composites for engineering applications like the automobile industry.
Tensile Performance of 3D-Printed Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Nylon Composites
