Effect of infill parameters on material sustainability and mechanical properties in fused deposition modelling process: a case study

Potential characteristics of additive manufacturing (AM) such as design freedom, process control and product quality are growing it to higher demand for future manufacturing. The FDM is frequently used AM technology, to produce lightweight and strong parts through the proper selection of controllable parameters. However, in view of growing mandate of sustainability, it also needs to understand the concept of advanced design inspired by nature for material saving and mechanical properties. This paper conceptualizes and describes the implementation of bio-inspired infill patterns for manufacturing intelligent structures of desired strength with material sustainability. A case study is conducted for characterizing the concept on making a unit of acrylic butadiene styrene with FDM process. The experimental results were investigated through analysis of variance to confirm the significance of parameters. Three patterns inspired by nature (gyroid, honeycomb and concentric) with varying infill densities (20%, 50%, 80% and 100%) have been fabricated and tested for material consumption and mechanical properties. The experimental results show that the integration of bio-inspired infill pattern to additive manufacturing provide desired strength and saves a significant amount of material. The suitable combination of pattern and infill density causes a notable variation in responses. The honeycomb and gyroid pattern with 80% infill have 66.83 MPa and 58.41 MPa flexural strength and 33.08 MPa and 47.19 MPa compressive strength, respectively. These values are close to the solid patterns. Consequently, the same process condition save 9.6% and 6.5% manufacturing material. The results of this study will be helpful to sustainable part design and manufacturing in coming new age product requirements.