Modeling Materials Coextrusion in Polymers Additive Manufacturing

Material extrusion additive manufacturing enables us to combine more materials in the same nozzle during the deposition process. This technology, called material coextrusion, generates an expanded range of material properties, which can gradually change in the design domain, ensuring blending or higher bonding/interlocking among the different materials. To exploit the opportunities offered by these technologies, it is necessary to know the behavior of the combined materials according to the materials fractions. In this work, two compatible pairs of materials, namely Polylactic Acid (PLA)-Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) and Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate (ASA)-TPU, were investigated by changing the material fractions in the coextrusion process. An original model describing the distribution of the materials is proposed. Based on this, the mechanical properties were investigated by analytical and numerical approaches. The analytical model was developed on the simplified assumption that the coextruded materials are a set of rods, whereas the more realistic numerical model is based on homogenization theory, adopting the finite element analysis of a representative volume element. To verify the deposition model, a specific experimental test was developed, and the modeled material deposition was superimposed and qualitatively compared with the actual microscope images regarding the different deposition directions and material fractions. The analytical and numerical models show similar trends, and it can be assumed that the finite element model has a more realistic behavior due to the higher accuracy of the model description. The elastic moduli obtained by the models was verified in experimental tensile tests. The tensile tests show Young’s moduli of 3425 MPa for PLA, 1812 MPa for ASA, and 162 MPa for TPU. At the intermediate material fraction, the Young’s modulus shows an almost linear trend between PLA and TPU and between ASA and TPU. The ultimate tensile strength values are 63.9 MPa for PLA, 35.7 MPa for ASA, and 63.5 MPa for TPU, whereas at the intermediate material fraction, they assume lower values. In this initial work, the results show a good agreement between models and experiments, providing useful tools for designers and contributing to a new branch in additive manufacturing research.