Failure Assessment of Additively Manufacturing PLA Specimens Using an Energy-Based Criterion
Abstract
The field of additive manufacturing (AM) has in the last decades become more andmore relevant. Rapid prototyping is a cheap and quick way of creating physical 3D-modelsof complex geometries. In this thesis, failure of polyactide (PLA) specimens createdusing fused deposition modelling (FDM) has been studied using an energy-basedapproach. PLA is a polymer created from biomass. It is therefore biodegradableand popular in the field of medical equipment. Failure loads of 12 different notchedspecimens has been predicted using the averaged strain energy density (ASED)obtained from numerical analyses over a control radius in the vicinity of the notch.The results indicate a good correlation between the experimental and analytical results,providing results which for the most part stay within a scatter band of +/- 20%.