Design for Fiber-Reinforced Additive Manufacturing

The continuously decreasing life cycle of modern products leads to new challenges for product development. Additive manufacturing (AM) processes are able to support faster development by rapid production of samples and prototypes. However, the material properties of components produced by common (plastic-) 3D-printers are often insufficient for functional prototyping. A well-established way to improve the properties of plastics is the embedding of reinforcing fibers. Thus, this paper shows a method for fiber-reinforced 3D-printing. Through this combination, several restrictions of conventional composite production can be eased and additional freedoms of design are gained. To support the design of such parts, an adapted design methodology for fiber-reinforced 3D-printing is developed.