Fracture studies of 3D-printed PLA-wood composite

Additive manufacturing (AM) has shown extraordinary growth over the past few years. In this three-dimensional (3D) printing, the final products are made by adding material layer-upon-layer. Although mechanical behavior of 3D-printed Polylactic Acid (PLA) parts have been investigated in several research works, there are a few studies on the mechanical characterization of 3Dprinted PLA-wood composites. In the present study, fracture behavior of intact and defected PLA-wood composite specimens were investigated. To this aim, wood-reinforced PLA material was used to print test coupons. It should be pointed out that the missing extrudates were considered as an intentional defect in the defected specimens. In this study, both groups of intact and defected composite specimens were printed with different raster directions. Based on a series of tensile tests, fracture load and stiffness of the examined parts were determined. Moreover, effects of raster orientations on the fracture behavior of the intact and defected parts were investigated. In this study, the obtained results of tests on intact and defected specimens were compared. This comparison indicated impacts of the defects on the fracture behavior of additively manufactured composite. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.