Dynamic mechanical analysis of FFF printed parts in ABSplus

With substantial progress in additive manufacturing (AM) technology in the recent years, AM parts are on the verge of becoming an economical option for small series manufacturing and on-demand spare parts. Especially Fused-Filament-Fabrication (FFF) has found widespread use in industrial as well as in private applications, due to its many advantages. Depending on the application, the elastic and dynamic behavior of a structure is critical, e.g. when designing resonating elements in meta materials. To predict the dynamic behavior of a structure, the most important parameters are the storage modulus, loss modulus and the density of the material. In polymers the first two parameters are typically frequency-dependent, and in the case of FFF parts they are also strongly anisotropic, due to the layer- and path-wise fabrication process. In this study, samples of FFF 3D-printed ABS parts with different printing parameters are investigated. Dynamic mechanical analyses are performed to obtain the temperature- and frequency-dependent properties of each parameter in the frequency range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. The results show that the frequency-dependency is constant over a variety of parameter sets. Subsequently, a bigger number of samples are measured in quasi-static load to obtain the variance within each parameter set.