Gallup Lucas, Trabia Mohamed, O'Toole Brendan, Fahmy Youssef
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Jan 10;15(2):368. doi: 10.3390/polym15020368.
The advancement of 3D printing has led to its widespread use. NinjaFlex, a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) filament, is a highly durable and flexible material that has been used to create flexible parts. While this material has been available for nearly two decades, the mechanical properties of 3D printed NinjaFlex parts are not well-understood, especially in bending. The focus of this research was predicting the behavior of small 3D printed NinjaFlex components. Three-dimensionally printed rectangular specimens of varying lengths and aspect ratios were loaded as cantilevers. The deflection of these specimens was measured using a computer. The experimental results were compared to a modified form of the Euler-Bernoulli Beam Theorem (MEB), which was developed to account for nonlinearities associated with large deflection. Additionally, experimental results were compared to the finite element analysis (FEA). The results showed that both modeling approaches were overall accurate, with the average difference between experimental deflection data and MEB predictions ranging from 0.6% to 3.0%, while the FEA predictions ranged from 0.4% to 2.4%. In the case of the most flexible specimens, MEB underestimated the experimental results, while FEA led to higher retraction.
3D打印技术的进步使其得到了广泛应用。NinjaFlex是一种热塑性聚氨酯（TPU）细丝，是一种高度耐用且灵活的材料，已被用于制造柔性部件。尽管这种材料已经问世近二十年，但3D打印的NinjaFlex部件的机械性能尚未得到充分了解，尤其是在弯曲方面。本研究的重点是预测小型3D打印NinjaFlex组件的行为。对不同长度和长宽比的三维打印矩形试样进行悬臂加载。使用计算机测量这些试样的挠度。将实验结果与改进后的欧拉-伯努利梁定理（MEB）进行比较，该定理是为考虑与大挠度相关的非线性而开发的。此外，还将实验结果与有限元分析（FEA）进行了比较。结果表明，两种建模方法总体上都是准确的，实验挠度数据与MEB预测值之间的平均差异在0.6%至3.0%之间，而FEA预测值在0.4%至2.4%之间。在最灵活的试样中，MEB低估了实验结果，而FEA导致了更高的回缩。
