Mechanics Modeling of Additive Manufactured Polymers

Polymers will continue to dominate the global market of additive manufacturing for at least a few decades. Investigating the mechanics of additive manufactured polymers not only creates fundamental knowledge of their mechanical behaviors but also guides the design and additive manufacturing of engineering or biomedical components. Unfortunately, the mechanical responses of these polymers are strongly dependent on the manufacturing process, material composition, printing orientation, temperature, etc., which bring about great challenges for the modeling. To overcome such challenges, this chapter introduces two high-fidelity nonlinear constitutive models devised specifically for additive manufactured photopolymers to facilitate the computational design process. The first model is developed to take into account the intrinsic anisotropy of photopolymers caused by the layer-wise manufacturing feature, while the second model is targeting the thermomechanical property of photopolymers across the glass transition temperature, which can be used to simulate the shape memory effect. Note that both models are applicable to the finite deformation scenario and inelastic deformation. At the end of this chapter, we also provide our humble opinions on the research demands and trends regarding the mechanics and modeling of additive manufactured polymers.