Materials and Design 24 (2003) 665670

Study of the mechanical properties of nonwoven fibre mat reinforced photopolymers used in rapid prototyping
D.E. Karalekas*
University of Piraeus, Karaoli and Dimitriou 80 Str., GR-185 34 Piraeus, Greece Received 22 January 2003; accepted 7 March 2003

Abstract The paper describes a series of preliminary experiments that were conducted to investigate the mechanical properties of two stereolithography resins reinforced using commercially available nonwoven fibre mats. Two commonly used photo-curable resin systems, an acrylic and an epoxy based one, were used to laser build the test specimens. Comparisons of the mechanical properties between pure-polymer specimens and their fibre-reinforced counterparts were made, by subjecting the parts to tensile tests. It was found that the fibre-reinforced specimens yielded higher measured values of elastic modulus and ultimate tensile strength. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Rapid solidification; Thermosets; Mechanical properties; Coupon testing

1. Introduction Stereolithography (SL) is a well-established technique for rapid prototyping and has been used across a wide range of industrial sectors. The technique is based on the process of photo-polymerisation, in which a resin, initially in liquid form, is converted to a solid polymer on exposure to ultra-violet laser radiation. The models are produced in a resin bath by curing successive layers of the resin material until a 3D object is formed w1x. On completion, the SL model is usually post-cured under high intensity ultra-violet light, in a UV chamber, to complete the polymerization process. The important mechanical properties of rapid prototyping parts are strength, hardness, ductility and stiffness. Poor strength and dimensional accuracy of the rapid prototypes created using SL have always been a major problem hindering their adoption to application under loading conditions. The weak mechanical properties and high volume of shrinkage associated with the photopolymer cause the prototype to warp and distort during laser solidification. These inaccuracies are further magnified during the post-curing stage. During the last few years, an overwhelming amount of research has been carried out to understand and to improve both the
*Corresponding author. Tel.: q30-210-414-2319. E-mail address: dkara@unipi.gr (D.E. Karalekas).

process and the photopolymer w210x. All these have been carried out with an aim of achieving prototypes of higher strength and accuracy. Reinforcement of plastics by fibres has been employed successfully as a mean of improving the mechanical properties of manufactured products. In fibre-reinforced composite materials, the inherent mechanical properties of the matrix material are modified by the introduction of the reinforcing fibres. The reinforcing fibres are usually of a continuous (long) or discontinuous (short) form. Enhancing the mechanical properties of photopolymer-based parts produced by layered manufacturing techniques using fibre reinforcements has been recently explored in the literature. Published research work in rapid prototyping has targeted the improvement of the mechanical properties of polymer-based parts produced by layered manufacturing utilizing long and short fibres and even micro-spheres w1115x. Reported work on rapid prototyping has been focusing on the development of techniques for the fabrication of functional and semi-functional composite parts utilizing direct laser sintering techniques w16x. Improvements on material mechanical properties have been reported by embedding continuous and short fibre reinforcements into the fabricated part w17x. This paper presents and describes the results of an experimental study undertaken to investigate the effects

0261-3069/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0261-306903.00153-5

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D.E. Karalekas / Materials and Design 24 (2003) 665670

Fig. 2. Fibre mat reinforced photopolymer specimen.

Fig. 1. Single layer of glass fibre nonwoven mat.

of the addition of commercially available nonwoven fibre mats on the mechanical properties of specimens built using the SL method. An acrylic-based photopolymer exhibiting considerable shrinkage characteristics w18x during laser solidification and an epoxy-based one, resulting to more dimensionally stable parts w19x, were considered in the presented work. 2. Specimen fabrication and experimental procedure Pure resin and reinforced test specimens were built on a SL machine (Stereos Desktop S) using two kinds of photopolymers: an acrylic-based resin (AlliedSignal Exactomer 2202SF) and an epoxy-based resin (DSM Somos 7110). All specimens were fabricated four at a time within the processing vat. The layer thickness of each specimen was controlled by pre-setting the layer pitch, which determines the step-size of each successive lowering of the stage on which the specimen was built. The cross-sectional profile was created by a laser beam using the single direction scanning pattern in which one layer of 0.15 mm thickness is scanned along the same direction as the scanning of the previous layer. A single longitudinal scanning pattern along the tensile direction was used. The laser exposure density was controlled by adjusting the laser power, and the scanning speed was set at 3250 m sy1. Specimens were built using a laser power of 38 mW. After layer fabrication, only the epoxybased specimens were further post-cured for 1 h using an ultraviolet light chamber. As a reinforcing material, several types of fibrous nonwoven mats were selected. Samples of commercially available E-Type Glass, PAN-based carbon and Para Aramid fibre mats, of different nominal area weight (g my2) and thickness, were acquired from Technical

Fiber Product Inc. In the first phase of the research work, presented here, just a single layer of reinforcing mat material (Fig. 1) was impregnated into the midplane of the fabricated specimens. Important fabrication questions that had to be solved, was firstly, how to ensure impregnation of the reinforcing layer into the resin specimen and secondly, how to achieve flat placing of the mat, avoiding thus phenomena of waviness or wrinkling as a result of the wiper movement placing the next layer coats to be solidified by the laser. When half the thickness of the specimen was laser built the moving platform was stopped and a pre-cut layer of fibre mat was manually placed on top of the last cured flat surface. At the end of the fabrication process the specimens were removed from the machine platform and examined. No wrinkling of the embedded reinforcing mat was observed although in most cases a slight deviation from its original placement (parallel to the outer flat surfaces of the specimen) had taken place. A typical fibre mat reinforced specimen is shown in Fig. 2. The basic characteristics and material properties of the reinforcing mats used are given in Table 1. The listed properties for the nonwoven fabrics are from material specifications provided by the manufacturer. The pure-resin modulus and strength were determined from tensile tests on layered specimens. Tensile tests were conducted on dogbone-shaped coupons using a tensile machine (Zwick Z10) with a 10 kN load capacity. The specimens were tested in tension
Table 1 Material properties of fibrous nonwoven mats Nonwoven mat (1) E-glass Area weight (g my2) 7 17 34 7 17 17 Average tensile strength (kPa) 0.3 0.8 1.5 0.4 0.7 0.6 Elongation (%) 1.6 1.9 1.2 1.1 1.8

(2) Carbon (3) Aramid

D.E. Karalekas / Materials and Design 24 (2003) 665670 Table 2 Average measured tensile mechanical properties of tested photopolymer resins Photopolymer (1) Acrylic-based (1.1) Pure resin (1.2) Fibrous reinforced (1.2.1) E-glass 7 g my2 17 g my2 (1.2.2) Carbon 7 g my2 17 g my2 (1.2.3) Aramid 17 g my2 (2) Epoxy-based (2.1) Pure resin (2.2) Fibrous reinforced (2.2.1) E-glass 34 g my2 50 g my2 Elastic modulus, (GPa) 1.90 Maximum strength (MPa) 37.1

667

Strain at break (%) 6.7

2.23 2.85 1.81 2.51 2.07 2.40

43.6 55.2 43.6 42.2 29.9 50.2

3.3 3.4 4.0 2.8 2.9 5.4

2.76 2.35

42.2 39.1

3.0 3.4

until failure, with the key mechanical properties, of the pure resin specimens and their reinforced counterparts, the tensile modulus and ultimate strength being measured. The crosshead speed of the machine was set to 5 mm miny1 and the force vs. extension data was collected using a digital data acquisition hardware and software. Up to eight specimens were tested for each case. 3. Results and discussion Table 2 summarises experimentally determined values for the modulus of elasticity, the ultimate tensile strength and tensile strain to fracture for the pure resin specimens considered in this study together with their various fibrereinforced counterparts. Fig. 3 shows typical load vs. crosshead displacement curves of pure and fibre mat reinforced specimens fabricated using the acrylic-based photopolymer resin. In Fig. 4, the load vs. displacement curves of a plain epoxy-based resin specimen as well as two of its counterparts containing in their mid-plane an embedded layer of glass fibre mat, of different nominal area weight, are presented. It is noted that the pure epoxy-based resin specimens are less ductile than the acrylic-based ones, fracturing at much higher loads. It is also observed that there is a decrease in the elongation to fracture encountered by the fibre-reinforced specimens compared to the non-reinforced ones, implying that the specimens have become more brittle with the addition of fibres. From the experimental results presented in Table 2, noticeable differences in the mechanical properties can be observed. For the acrylic-based reinforced specimens it is seen that under loading they behave linearly up to fracture, exhibiting in most cases higher ultimate tensile strengths and elastic moduli. Significant increases in the

elastic modulus were obtained when the resin specimens were reinforced with 17 g my2 nominal area weight glass and carbon fibre mats, indicating improvements in the stiffness of the reinforced specimens. Embedment of the lighter fibrous mats did not contributed much to the measured value for modulus, affecting though the maximum tensile strength and strain to fracture. Specimens reinforced with a glass fibre mat (of 17 g my2 nominal area weight) were found to exhibit a 50% higher stiffness compared to the non-reinforced ones. The ultimate tensile strength increases considerably for the glass and carbon reinforced specimens while there is a significant decrease in the elongation to fracture. The tensile strength of the glass reinforced specimens increases by 48% while the strain to fracture decreases by 51% compared to the corresponding properties measured for the pure-resin specimens. These findings are in agreement to those of relative studies reported in the literature. Cheah et al. w17x have found significant improvements in stiffness and strength over the pure polymer specimens for moulded acrylic-based resin specimens reinforced with 20% short glass fibre concentrations. The reinforced specimens were found to exhibit double the stiffness and 33% higher strength than their non-reinforced counterparts. A similar, in principle, experimental work undertaken by Zak et al. w11x has led to the enhancement of the mechanical properties, where an 80% higher modulus is reported for the reinforced layered specimens. In that study, the composite specimens were fabricated using a RLCM prototype system by adding 1.6 mm glass fibres (of 17% fibre content) to SL5170 photopolymer resin. From Fig. 4, it is seen that compared to the acrylicthe epoxy-based reinforced specimens did not exhibit significant increase of the elastic modulus. Characteris-

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Fig. 3. Typical load vs. displacement curves of pure and fibre mat (17 g my2) reinforced acrylic-based photopolymer specimens.

tically, a moderate improvement of the modulus was obtained only for the specimens with the lower nominal area weight (34 g my2) glass reinforcement. A slight improvement of the modulus was obtained for resin specimens with glass reinforcements of higher nominal area weight (50 g my2), implying poor bonding between the adjacent layers of the thicker fibre mat and the cured photopolymer material. This low reinforcement efficiency, resulting to no transfer of load to the reinforcing layer, is also supported by the fact that all reinforced specimens fractured at lower loads to those measured for the pure resin specimens. In addition, it is possible that air trapped in the resin-reinforcement interface area, due to the squeezing process (the whiper movement which smoothes the surface of the resin layer before building each layer), can act as stress concentrator decreasing significantly the strength of the specimens. From the experimental results obtained for the epoxybased specimens, important considerations of degree of bonding and inter-laminar (reinforcing layer matsolidified liquid resin layer) are raised since without strong adhesion between them it is not possible to obtain good mechanical properties. It is noted that for the reinforced epoxy-based specimens many uncured resin spots at the

reinforcementpure resin interface and close to the edges of the specimens were observed at the end of the laser curing process. Extensive post-curing in the UV chamber had to be carried out to fully cure these specimens increasing thus its brittle nature. Furthermore, the additional curing can lead to the generation of higher internal stresses due to further shrinkage of areas of varying degree of cure. From literature it is derived that this further consolidation process presents obvious challenges to the mechanical properties of the reinforced photo-polymers, since specimens may experience significant stress concentration, shrinkage, warpage, delamination, andyor shape deformation during post-curing. Previous experimental studies on SL built composites have demonstrated a dependency of the mechanical properties and resulted shrinkage in short fibre-filled reinforced specimens on processing and post-processing parameters w17x. 4. Summary The aim of the undertaken work was to experimentally investigate if embedment of commercially available nonwoven fibre mats into widely used photo-curable

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Fig. 4. Typical load vs. displacement curves of pure and fibre mat reinforced epoxy-based photopolymer specimens.

resins can improve the mechanical properties of the laser fabricated parts. It has been shown that the addition of just a single layer of fibrous material, in a matyveil form, in an acrylic-based photopolymer can increase significantly the elastic modulus and the mechanical strength of the SL built prototype, compared to its pure resin counterpart. On the other hand, the mechanical properties did not improve significantly when thicker glass fibre mat reinforcements were introduced into an epoxy-based photopolymer. Both studied reinforced resin materials behaved under tensile loading linearly up to fracture, exhibiting lower elongation to fracture than their pure resin counterparts. Future work should consider the effects of reinforcing layer-resin bonding problems, number of reinforcing layers and varying processing parameters (laser power, layer pitch, scan directions) on the mechanical properties of such SL built reinforced prototypes. Acknowledgments The author is grateful to Mr G. Giannatsis for his helpful contribution during the fabrication of the test specimens and to Mrs A. Antoniou and D. Karvouniari for conducting part of the experimental work.

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