Finite Element Analysis of Infill Density on the Compressive Strength of 3D Printed Parts by Fused Deposition Modelling

Abstract

3D printing, one of the subsets of Additive Manufacturing (AM), has gained popularity not only at prototyping but also for commercial applications because of its capability to prototype the complex parts in one go. At present, the 3D printed parts provide solutions starting from some common requirements to high-end ones, such as aerospace, medical, and engineering applications. 3D printed parts that are used for such high-end applications are usually subjected tensile, compressive bending and torsional loading and may lead the failure in the component. To minimize such failure there should be understanding of the effect of process parameters over the mechanical behaviour of the 3D printed parts. In this paper, the compressive FEA analysis has been conducted to examine the effect of infill density over the compressive strength of 3D printed parts and the results are validated with experimental results of available literature. The standard specimen design as per ASTM-D695 has been drafted using SOLIDWORKS 2018 and the honeycomb infill structure has been created using ANSYS SPACECLAIM 19.1. Finite Elements Modelling (FEM) has been done with infill densities 0, 20, 30, 40 and 100% using ANSYS STRUCTURE 19.1. Compressive strength increases with the increase of infill density the sample with 0 and 100% infill densities shows the minimum and maximum compressive strength. Results are validated with the experimental results and maximum deviation between experimental and finite element analysis has been recorded at 5.94%.