Mechanical Characterization of Kevlar Epoxy Composites derived from 3D Printing process

Abstract

     Abstract: Additively fabricated polymer based composites exhibit ascendancies over the conventional manufactured polymer products because of their tweaked delineation pliability, dwarf cadence fixture of model-to-fabrication process for shortening the waste of material and cost of investment. Emphasis on short fiber included thermo-plastic reinforced composites is increasing now-a-days and the investigation for analyzing the mechanical properties is enhancing day-to-day. On the other hand, derivation of thermo-plastic composites from 3D-printing process involves more porosity and less mechanical strength. To overcome the existing drawbacks in the present work the analysis of producing short Kevlar based reinforced epoxy composites using additive manufacturing is made. The fabrication is thus archived with the customized setup of direct-write additive manufacturing. The vibration integrated parameters involved in the fabrication process are analyzed meticulously. With this experimentation, high dense and high viscous Kevlar composite is made with a maximum of 6.1% Kevlar fibers. The produced Kevlar composite links are contrasted with the unreinforced Kevlar links with 3-point bending setup. The analysis carried out in static and dynamic aspects. At the end of the experimentation, it is observed that mechanical strength, strength to weight ratio and ductility are improved for the work pieces obtained from additive manufacturing. Hence, it is evident that the adoptability practices for the Kevlar composites using additive manufacturing are more beneficial with respect to aerospace structural applications.

Index Terms: Kevlar composites, Additive manufacturing, 3-Point Bending.