Investigation of 3D Printed Honeycomb Cores by Varying Printing Parameters for Different Loading Conditions

Abstract

Light weight components having greater strength and lower manufacturing cost are the need of the hour especially for aerospace industries. For this, honeycomb sandwich structures of various materials and parameters are developed by Additive Manufacturing (AM) to meet the desired output of sufficient strength to withstand compression and flexural loading. In this paper, the honeycomb structures are fabricated using a fused filament fabrication (FDM) technique. The effect of different printing conditions on the compressive and flexural properties of the 3D-printed honeycomb structures made of PLA, ABS and PLA+ polymeric laminates are investigated experimentally and analyzed by Taguchi and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). Three build orientations, i.e., 0, 45 and 90 degrees, with layer heights of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 mm are considered for the 3D printing. Moreover, Multi-objective optimization is performed to optimize the strength and printing time (cost) of L27 array samples. Results show that 90ᵒ and 0ᵒ build orientations with 0.3 mm layer height being PLA and PLA+ the best materials are the optimum conditions for compressive and flexural mode of testing, respectively. The results deduced that compressive and flexural samples could withstand maximum load of 69,000N and 120 N with minimum printing time. Thus. it would be fruitful in harnessing energy for the development of sustainable printing of durable components.