Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Progress in Additive Manufacturing (2023) 8:947–959 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40964-022-00369-5 FULL RESEARCH ARTICLE Experimental and numerical study of orthotropic behavior of 3D printed polylactic acid by material extrusion Luis Sosa‑Vivas 1  · Jhon Gonzalez‑Delgado 1  · Gabriel Torrente‑Prato 2 Received: 19 July 2022 / Accepted: 1 December 2022 / Published online: 15 December 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Abstract The advantages of 3D printing technology will continue to ensure the growth and importance of this manufacturing technique. Improving the mechanical properties and the understanding of the anisotropic behavior of 3D printed parts are some of the main challenges of Additive Manufacturing. The aim of this work is to study the effect of printing speed on the orthotropic behavior of polylactic acid (PLA) manufactured by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), also known as material extrusion (ME). 80 tensile tests were made on samples printed with printing speeds from 40 to 145 mm/s, and print directions were longitudinal and transverse. A new numerical method based on a trial of finite element simulations is proposed to find the Poisson's ratios of the orthotropic PLA manufactured by FDM. The mesh was made with Gmsh® and processing with Cal- culix®. The PLA was simulated as an elastic orthotropic material. Experimental measurements and numerical analysis show that the Poisson’s ratio perpendicular to the load decreases lightly with the printing speed and changes strongly with the print direction. The new numerical method proposed describes exactly the mechanical behavior of 3D printed parts manufactured by FDM with a longitudinal concentric fill partner, therefore the elastic behavior of 3D printed parts of PLA manufactured by FDM can be simulated as Elastic Orthotropic Material. Keywords Additive manufacturing (AM) · Fused deposition modeling (FDM) · Polylactic acid polymer (PLA) · Elastic orthotropic material · Poisson’s ratios 1 Introduction Additive manufacturing has been widely used in different industries, including architecture, prototype manufacturing, aerospace, material science, biomechanics, and chemical engineering [1, 2], with a wide variety of materials [3] like plastic, ceramic [4, 5], and metals. Additive manufacturing has been positioned as an innova- tive manufacturing process with advantages such as mate- rial savings and flexibility. Additive manufacturing has been used widely to manufacture polymeric parts with a wide range of structures, mechanical properties, and complex geometries. For example, in 2020 Li Ma [6] used additive manufacturing to print geometries as complex as multistable cylindrical metastructures to study the snapping mechani- cal metamaterials, and in 2021 Tark et al. [7] printed com- plex geometries of bi-stable cylindrical layers to study the mechanical behavior and controlled snapping sequence of bi-stable lattices incorporated into cylindrical shells. Addi- tive manufacturing has been used in applications as complex as the study of the behavior of metamaterials. During 2017, the AM grows 12.5% compared to 2016 and this has been maintained until 2019 [8], the Global Additive Manufacturing Market size is expected to reach $44.6 billion by 2028, rising to market growth of 18.9% CAGR during the forecast period [9]. These manufacturing techniques have shown themselves to be a strong option for contemporary production processes. These have encouraged its research. The relation of printing parameters, the mechanical properties, and the anisotropic behavior of AM parts have encouraged the research about this new manufacturing * Gabriel Torrente-Prato gtorrentep@ecci.edu.co Luis Sosa-Vivas luise.sosav@ecci.edu.co Jhon Gonzalez-Delgado jhonj.gonzalezd@ecci.edu.co 1 Dirección de Postgrado Universidad ECCI, Cra. 19 No. 49-20, Código Postal 111311, Bogotá, Colombia 2 Dirección de Ingeniería Mecánica, Universidad ECCI, Cra. 19 No. 49-20, Código Postal 111311, Bogotá, Colombia Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.