Flexural characteristics of mortar cement reinforced with 3D-printed polymer

Abstract

In this research, reinforcement for cement mortars is printed using polymers-thermoplastics on a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printer and its effect on the strength and response of cementitious mortar samples under bending are studied. Two common thermoplastic polymers; Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) and Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol-Modified (PETG) are used to reinforce mortar beam samples measuring 200x50x50 mm in flexure. For each thermoplastic type, four bar 150 mm in length and with a plain rectangular cross-section of 10x5 mm were printed and embedded in the specimen and tested under 3-point load flexural load. The samples with PETG reinforcement showed much better flexural behavior than the PLA reinforced samples in terms of ultimate loads and deformations. The average ultimate flexural capacity of the PETG samples is almost double of the PLA samples (11.37 MPa compared to 5.94 MPa), while the deformation of the PETG samples at ultimate loads reached 3 times the deformation of the PLA samples owing to its higher strength and plastic behavior.