Designing and manufacturing of a customized instrumentation for measuring of granular materials mechanical properties by utilizing 3D printing technology

Abstract The use of additive technologies allows increasing the availability of scientific equipment in educational centres. The research is dedicated to designing, assembling and testing a laboratory device for measuring the mechanical moduli of granular media. The mechanics of a granular media depend on both the mechanical parameters of individual granules such as particle size, elastic moduli, friction and macro-parameters of the granular media, such as internal structure or humidity. The laboratory device was designed in CAD software package and printed on the 3D printer DF-Print 3.5 using ABS plastic. Comparing to the other similar devices, the advantage of the one we are developing consists in the quick and cheap replicating of its parts on any available 3D printer. The device was tested for different materials, the available range of measuring data and applied loads were determined.