Characterization for elastic constants of fused deposition modelling-fabricated materials based on the virtual fields method and digital image correlation

Fused deposition modelling (FDM), a widely used rapid prototyping process, is a promising technique in manufacturing engineering. In this work, a method for characterizing elastic constants of FDM-fabricated materials is proposed. First of all, according to the manufacturing process of FDM, orthotropic constitutive model is used to describe the mechanical behavior. Then the virtual fields method (VFM) is applied to characterize all the mechanical parameters \((Q_{11}\), \(Q_{22}\), \(Q_{12}\), \(Q_{66})\) using the full-field strain, which is measured by digital image correlation (DIC). Since the principal axis of the FDM-fabricated structure is sometimes unknown due to the complexity of the manufacturing process, a disk in diametrical compression is used as the load configuration so that the loading angle can be changed conveniently. To verify the feasibility of the proposed method, finite element method (FEM) simulation is conducted to obtain the strain field of the disk. The simulation results show that higher accuracy can be achieved when the loading angle is close to \(30^{\circ }\). Finally, a disk fabricated by FDM was used for the experiment. By rotating the disk, several tests with different loading angles were conducted. To determine the position of the principal axis in each test, two groups of parameters \((Q_{11}\), \(Q_{22}\), \(Q_{12}\), \(Q_{66})\) are calculated by two different groups of virtual fields. Then the corresponding loading angle can be determined by minimizing the deviation between two groups of the parameters. After that, the four constants \((Q_{11}\), \(Q_{22}\), \(Q_{12}\), \(Q_{66})\) were determined from the test with an angle of \(27^{\circ }\).