Investigation of fused deposition modeling parameters on mechanical properties and characterization of ABS/carbon fiber composites

The effect of parameters of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene composites reinforced with carbon fabricated by fused deposition modeling was studied in this work. Parameters like infill density, raster angle, layer thickness, and printing parameters are varied and their influence on mechanical properties was analyzed experimentally. Experiments were planned by the design of experiments technique and mathematical equations were generated to analyze the impact of these parameters. ANOVA is involved to ensure the validity of the mathematical equations. The mechanism of the fractured samples was studied using scanning electron microscopy. The tensile strength of ABS/carbon fiber composites ranges from 21.74 to 28.09 N/mm(2), while the flexural strength ranges from 2.62 to 3.14 N/mm(2) and the impact strength ranges from 3.66 to 5.19 kJ/m(2). The fracture of composites is characterized by cavities, infill gaps, bonding, dimples, tearing debonding of fiber, crack, delamination, shearing, crack, and fiber protrusion. The nature of failure varied from ductile to brittle depending upon the change in process parameters.