Experimental evaluation of vibration damping performance of 3D-Printed TPU, rubber, and PLA carbon fiber layers for additive manufacturing applications

The 3D printed components face challenges in accuracy of its dimension and surface roughness due to the machine induced vibrations of the additive manufacturing systems. A polymer-based damping material offers a simple and cost-effective solution for this passive vibration of the additive manufacturing systems. In this work, a polymer-based materials such as rubber, PLA carbon fiber (PLA-CF) composite, and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) were fabricated via fused deposition modelling (FDM) process and their damping performance was assessed when positioned under FDM 3D printer machine. A cube specimen with a dimension of 5 × 5 × 5 cm 3 was fabricated in FDM system and its dynamic performances such as displacement, frequency, acceleration, and velocity were recorded at 10% intervals throughout its printing process. The highest dynamic response has been attained by the PLA-CF damper due to its negligible viscoelastic energy and high stiffness property resulting maximum acceleration of 1.0 m/s 2 and a displacement of 4.0 × 10 −7 m at 100% printing completion. Whereas, rubber damper achieved intermediate damping behaviour with acceleration of 1.5 m/s 2 due to its progressive viscoelastic deformation. In contrast, TPU produced a superior damping performance minimal displacement and acceleration throughout its printing process. Moreover, the cube printed under TPU damper produced smooth surface finish with surface roughness of (Ra = 1.63 μm, Rz = 20.4 μm). Overall, this work demonstrates that the TPU material shows exceptional damping performance as compared to other materials which were investigated and proves that a potential material for minimizing the vibration of FDM manufacturing system.