3D Printing of a Self-Healing Thermoplastic Polyurethane through FDM: From Polymer Slab to Mechanical Assessment.

Polymers (Basel)

Novel Aerospace Materials Group, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands.

Published: January 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • Self-healing (SH) polymers can improve the quality and durability of 3D-printed parts, but their complex structures and limited lab-scale production pose challenges in 3D printing.
  • The paper outlines a method for creating and 3D printing a self-healing polyurethane, detailing the processes from synthesis to filament production and part fabrication.
  • Testing showed that the 3D-printed self-healing polyurethane maintained similar mechanical and healing properties to its bulk form, outperforming a commercial alternative by being less dependent on printing conditions while enabling room-temperature self-healing.

Article Abstract

The use of self-healing (SH) polymers to make 3D-printed polymeric parts offers the potential to increase the quality of 3D-printed parts and to increase their durability and damage tolerance due to their (on-demand) dynamic nature. Nevertheless, 3D-printing of such dynamic polymers is not a straightforward process due to their polymer architecture and rheological complexity and the limited quantities produced at lab-scale. This limits the exploration of the full potential of self-healing polymers. In this paper, we present the complete process for fused deposition modelling of a room temperature self-healing polyurethane. Starting from the synthesis and polymer slab manufacturing, we processed the polymer into a continuous filament and 3D printed parts. For the characterization of the 3D printed parts, we used a compression cut test, which proved useful when limited amount of material is available. The test was able to quasi-quantitatively assess both bulk and 3D printed samples and their self-healing behavior. The mechanical and healing behavior of the 3D printed self-healing polyurethane was highly similar to that of the bulk SH polymer. This indicates that the self-healing property of the polymer was retained even after multiple processing steps and printing. Compared to a commercial 3D-printing thermoplastic polyurethane, the self-healing polymer displayed a smaller mechanical dependency on the printing conditions with the added value of healing cuts at room temperature.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7835810PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13020305DOI Listing

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