Performance of 3D printed poly(lactic acid)/halloysite nanocomposites 10 Mohumed Bilal Panjwani a , Maduranga Pillai b , Rangika Thilan De Silva b , Kheng Lim Goh c, d , Pooria Pasbakhsh a a School of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Discipline, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia; b Sri Lanka Institute of Nanotechnology Pvt Ltd. (SLINTEC), Nanotechnology and science park, Homagama, SriLanka; c Advanced Composites Research Group, Newcastle Research & Innovation Institute (NewRIIS), Singapore; d Newcastle University, Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom 1. Introduction Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the most widely used additive manufacturing technique due to its cost effectiveness and simplicity [1]. In FDM print- ing, the thermoplastic filament feeding into the printer is subjected to high tempera- tures to cause it to melt; the melt is extruded from the nozzle and gets laid down layer-by-layer onto a build platform. Each layer hardens and bonds to the previous layer to create a 3D object that was designed by the user. Thermoplastics such as pol- y(lactic acid) (PLA) [2] and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) [3] are the most commonly used filaments for FDM printing [4]. However, the average elastic modulus of 3D printed parts made from ABS and PLA is around 1.8 and 3.4 GPa, respectively, but those produced by injection molding yielded higher values such as 2.8 and 3.5 GPa, respectively [5]. Since the elastic modulus of FDM printed parts are typically lower than similar parts produced by injection molding, this limits the widespread application of FDM products [3,5]. PLA is an attractive biopolymer produced from renewable sources such as corn, potato and sugar cane, with high biocompati- bility and biodegradability [6]. Owing to these remarkable properties of PLA, 3D-printed PLA prototypes have great potential for applications in medical, automo- bile and packaging applications [7]. Recently, nanocomposites have attracted a great deal of attention from re- searchers due to their potential impact on wide range of industrial applications. Nanocomposites underpin the concept of reinforcement of materials by nanopar- ticle materials to result in new multifunctional materials with unprecedented flexi- bility and enhanced physical properties [8,9]. Previous studies have shown that nanofillers such as carbon nanofibres [1,10], graphene [1,11], Montmorillonite (MMT) [12] and halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) [13e19] can significantly improve Interfaces in Particle and Fibre Reinforced Composites https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102665-6.00010-8 Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.