Tensile properties of polypropylene additively manufactured by FDM

Abstract

Polypropylene (PP) is an extensively studied and tested environment-friendly polymer, whose applications range from product packaging in the food industry to biomedical applications. It is a non-toxic, lightweight material, relatively simple for processing. Research findings show that PP material has higher elongation than any other thermoplastic material used in Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology, which is the most developed and used extrusion based additive technology. In FDM, many printing parameters must be set before the actual additive manufacturing process, and they have a decisive influence on the mechanical properties of fabricated parts. In this research, layer height, infill density, and raster orientation are the parameters considered in the analysis, resulting in four specimen batches being prepared for tensile testing.