Characterization and Simulated Analysis of Carbon Fiber with Nanomaterials and Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Due to the vast increase and versatility of Additive Manufacturing and 3D-printing, in this study, the mechanical behavior of implementing both continuous and short carbon fiber within Nylon and investigated for its effectiveness within additively manufactured prints. Here, 0.1wt% of pure nylon was combined with carbon nanotubes through both dry and heat mixing to determine the best method and used to create printable filaments. Compression, tensile and short beam shear (SBS) samples were created and tested to determine maximum deformation and were simulated using ANSYS and its ACP Pre tool. SEM imaging was used to analyze CNT integration within the nylon filament, as well as the fractography of tested samples. Experimental testing shows that compressive strength increased by 28%, and the average SBS samples increased by 8% with minimal impacts on the tensile strength. The simulated results for Nylon/CF tensile samples were compared to experimental results and showed that lower amounts of carbon fiber samples tend to have lower errors.