Global sensitivity analysis of 3D printed material with binder jet technology by using surrogate modeling and polynomial chaos expansion

The mechanical properties of 3D printed materials produced with additive manufacturing depend on the printing process, which is controlled by several tuning parameters. This paper focuses on Binder Jet technology and studies the influence of printing resolution, activator percentage, droplet mass, and printing speed on the compressive and flexural strength, as well as on the Young's modulus of the bulk printed material. As the number of tests required using a one factor at a time approach is not time efficient, a Design of Experiments approach was applied and optimal points in the 4-dimensional parameter space were selected. Then Sobol' sensitivity indices were calculated for each mechanical property through polynomial chaos expansion. We found that the mechanical properties are primarily controlled by the binder content of the bulk material, namely printing resolution and droplet mass. A smaller dependence on the activator percentage was also found. The printing speed does not affect the mechanical properties studied. In parallel, curing of the specimens at 80-115 degrees C for 30-120 min increases their strength.