Study on flexural and tensile behavior of PLA, ABS and PLA-ABS materials

Abstract In recent years, additive manufacturing process has found various applications in many industrial as well as commercial sectors. ABS and PLA are the most commonly used filaments in 3D printing. Although both of them provide high quality materials in their own ways, their resistance to stresses are not of industrial standards. 3D printed materials are always considered to be fragile and required to be given care. So, in order to present with a new filament material which can withstand higher stresses as compared to the conventional filaments, blends of PLA and ABS are produced in various compositions (20% ABS and 80% PLA; 50% ABS and 50% PLA; 80% ABS and 20% PLA) and they are tested for their resistance against tensile and flexural loads. Specimens with the above compositions are printed in accordance with ASTM geometry considering the ASTM standards. The UTS data for various combinations are established. The UTS data are then cross-indexed with the result of the flexural test. Results are compared to the properties of normal ABS and PLA and observed that the blend materials outperformed pure ABS and PLA by a marginal amount. Thus, implementation of this filament material in 3D printing applications can ensure products with higher resistance to stresses.