Numerical and experimental analysis of infill rate on the mechanical properties of fused deposition modelling polylactic acid parts

Material characterization of 3D printed PLA parts with different infill rates was performed by standard tensile tests. Three-dimensional finite element simulations of the tensile tests were also performed. For the simulations, a method for reconstructing the CAD model of the printed parts with different infill rates was proposed and numerical simulations were conducted on the reconstructed models. A reasonable prediction of the experiments in terms of material behavior and the stress-strain characteristics for infill rate of 100% is obtained from the numerical analysis. Discrepancies between the numerical predictions and experimental results especially in the plastic deformation region for other infill rates are discussed in the paper.