The experimental tests were conducted in the laboratories of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, in the laboratories of Engineering and Industrial Management at the Polytechnic University of Castelo Branco, and in the laboratories of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Coimbra. This section provides information on the tested material, sample preparation, and test procedures.
3.1. Material
The tested specimens are made of Nylon 12CF, a registered trademark material by Stratasys (Rehovot, Israel). It is a filament-shaped material used in their additive manufacturing machines in the FDM process, specifically in the models Fortus 450mc and F900. This thermoplastic material is reinforced with short carbon fibers, consisting of 35% by weight of fibers with a length of 150 μm and a diameter of 8 μm [
29]. Based on visual inspection of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) image from [
29], obtained using a ZEISS (Oberkochen, Germany) SEM, a preferential alignment of fibers within the thermoplastic matrix along the extrusion direction can be observed.
Composite materials with continuous and oriented filaments are typically classified as orthotropic, displaying distinct mechanical properties depending on the direction of analysis. To apply the IEV and perform tensile tests on such materials, it is essential to prepare specimens with varied orientations of the composite structure, as illustrated in
Figure 2. For instance, one can consider the fibers or filaments to be aligned along direction 1 of the reference depicted in
Figure 2.
The specimens were manufactured using a Stratasys Fortus 900 machine (Stratasys, Rehovot, Israel), which has a build area of 610 mm × 914 mm and a height of 914 mm. The corresponding machine parameters used in the fabrication process are summarized in
Table 1.
The production of specimens using this machine and material requires a thin sheet of transparent nylon (a Stratasys material), which is fixed to the build platform by vacuum. The parts are fabricated directly on this sheet. The machine has a particular feature when working with Nylon 12CF: even if the part does not structurally require supports, they are automatically generated to facilitate part removal from the nylon sheet.
In the post-processing step, the support material is removed by dissolution in an aqueous solution with the Stratasys chemical agent P400SC. The pieces are submerged in this bath in a tank heated up to 50 °C for 4 h.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, the specimens must strictly adhere to the ratio of
being
20. Therefore, the specimens were produced with the initial dimensions of 7 × 38 × 138 (mm). In the FDM process, for a part in production, there will be one or several filaments that are deposited to form the perimeter of the part, and there is also a “zig zag” zone in the transition of the filament deposition direction, as represented in
Figure 3.
For the analysis to focus solely on filaments aligned according to the desired directions, it is necessary to extract the interior geometry within the red marker, as represented in
Figure 3. This ensures a higher-quality test, as the modulus of elasticity and Poisson’s ratio are accurately determined under conditions where all filaments are fully aligned in the same reference direction. Accordingly, the specimens were initially produced with construction and deposition directions, as illustrated in
Figure 4, but were later machined to eliminate geometric effects.
The X-Y plane represents the construction base of the machine, and each red line represents a filament, where successive ones will form a layer. In specimen A, all layers have the deposition of the filaments at 0°, perpendicular to the length of the specimen. In specimen B, the layers have the filaments oriented at 90°, parallel to the length of the specimen. For specimens C and D, the layers will be at ±45°. It should be noted that all the specimens in this study were manufactured with 100% infill density.
At the end of the process of materialization of the specimens, it was noted that the layers that formed the perimeter did not have a complete aggregation to the core of the pieces produced. To this end, a Micro-CT analysis was performed to better understand the effect that occurred. The Phoenix v|tomex|x m 240 Micro-CT equipment (Baker Hughes, Houston, TX, USA) was used, equipped with a flat panel detector with a resolution of 2024 × 2024 pixels, and the voltage and current of the X-ray emitter (conical configuration) were 100 kV and 400 μA, respectively. A total of 1194 projections were made in each analysis, the exposure time was adjusted to 131 ms, and the voxel size (spatial resolution) was 47 μm. Subsequently, grayscale projections were processed to reconstruct complete 3D images of all specimens (the volume) using the Phoenix Data X2 Reconstruction software version 2.6.0.
Figure 5b,c shows the visual result of the 3D reconstruction of specimen D (
Figure 5a) using the myVGL viewer version 2024.4.
The existing voids, the effect of transition of the direction of deposition, and the perimeter of the specimen are perceptible in the figures from the Micro-CT analysis.
Figure 5c highlights the existence of pores that recur along the vertical sides of specimen D, between the deposited perimeter and the core of the specimen. The application of the IEV test on these layers that do not present great material continuity would impair the test. Thus, the importance of removing transition effects from the direction of deposition of the filaments and the perimeter is reinforced.
For the tensile test, the specimens were obtained by machining a plate of the material under study, measuring 177 mm in length, 131 mm in width, and 4 mm in thickness. The layers were deposited with alternating orientations of −45° and +45°, a pattern that was repeated throughout the construction. It should be noted that the plate produced was also manufactured with a 100% infill density, and the same machine parameters were used in the production of IEV specimens. Machining, in addition to generating the specimen’ geometry according to the chosen tensile test standard, was used to eliminate the previously mentioned undesirable effects.
3.3. Uniaxial Tensile Test
3.3.1. Testing Equipment
For the mechanical tensile test, the Shimadzu AGS-100KNX universal testing machine (Shimadzu, Kyoto, Japan) was used, with a 100 KN load cell and equipped with wedge grips. To measure the transverse elongation in the tensile test of each tested specimen, a strain gauge of the type GFLA-3-350-50 from Tokyo Sokki Kenkyujo (Tokyo, Japan) was used. The Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik (Darmstadt, Germany) extensometric bridge was used, which was responsible for making the entire electrical circuit of the Wheatstone bridge. The PicoScope 3204A (oscilloscope) (Pico Technology, St Neots, UK) was used to read the values of the extension variation and by recording it from the strain gauge. For the measurement of the longitudinal elongation, a clip-on extensometer was used, with the signal recording made through the testing machine’s own controller.
3.3.2. Specimen Preparation
The ASTM D638-14 standard was used for the mechanical tensile test. Five type I specimens were produced, meeting the dimensions specified in the standard, as shown in
Figure 7.
After machining the plate of the material, using a Roland MDX-650 CNC (Roland DG Corporation, Hamamatsu, Japan) to obtain the geometry of the specimens, they were polished to ensure a good surface finishing for bonding the extensometers. Using the micrometer, the specimens were measured in the main dimensions for subsequent data processing after the tensile test. Several measurements were made to obtain the arithmetic mean of each dimension, as shown in
Table 3.
Before starting the attachment of the strain gauge, its symmetry lines were marked on the specimen using a scriber. The surface of the specimen that would receive the strain gauge through petroleum ether was cleaned. With the help of a magnifying glass, the strain gauge was placed in the right position, depending on the markings that the strain gauge provided and the lines previously marked on the specimen. Cyanoacrylate adhesive was used for attaching the strain gauge to the surface of the specimen [
34].
3.3.3. Testing Procedure
In the tensile test, according to ASTM D638-14, a test speed of 1 mm/min was applied to type I specimens, with an initial distance between grips of 115 mm. It was necessary to use the Wheatstone bridge to read the variation of the resistance in the strain gauge, and consequently, it was possible to determine the transverse elongation in the specimen. To measure the longitudinal elongation, the clip-on extensometer with an initial distance (gauge length) of 50 mm was used.
Figure 8 shows the clip-on extensometer positioned on the specimen, the specimen with the strain gauge previously glued, and the various electrical wires that will be connected to measuring equipment.
The clip-on extensometer was connected directly to the controller of the tensile testing machine, which enabled us to obtain, at the end of the test, a data file containing the column of the duration of the test, the force measured by the load cell, the elongation of the specimen between grips, and also the elongation value recorded by the clip-on extensometer in the region of the gauge length of the specimen (value of higher accuracy).
The measurement and recording of strain gauge values followed a different approach. The strain gauge was connected to the Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik strain gauge bridge (Germany), which managed the entire Wheatstone bridge electrical circuit, configured as a 1/4 bridge. From this device, one of its analog outputs was connected via cable to the PicoScope 3204A (Pico Technology, St Neots, UK), which was responsible for reading the variation in extension and recording the data. Simultaneously, another channel of the PicoScope was connected to the load cell of the tensile testing machine, capturing and recording the force values.
In this way, each of the two data files will contain a “constant” that allows for overlaying all the information. Thus, the same data column (force) is present in both files (force/transverse elongation and force/longitudinal elongation), enabling the calculation of the Poisson’s ratio according to the ASTM E132-04 standard [
35].