Additive manufactured sandwich composite/ABS parts for unmanned aerial vehicle applications

Athanasios Galatas, Hany Hassanin*, Yahya Zweiri, Lakmal Seneviratne

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of most popular 3D printing techniques of thermoplastic polymers. Nonetheless, the poor mechanical strength of FDM parts restricts the use of this technology in functional parts of many applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) where lightweight, high strength, and stiffness are required. In the present paper, the fabrication process of low-density acrylonitrile butadiene styrenecarbon (ABS) with carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) sandwich layers for UAV structure is proposed to improve the poor mechanical strength and elastic modulus of printed ABS. The composite sandwich structures retains FDM advantages for rapid making of complex geometries, while only requires simple post-processing steps to improve the mechanical properties. Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to investigate the influence of the core density and number of CFRP layers on the mechanical properties. The results showed an improvement of specific strength and elastic modulus with increasing the number of CFRP. The specific strength of the samples improved from 20 to 145 KN·m/kg while the Young's modulus increased from 0.63 to 10.1 GPa when laminating the samples with CFRP layers. On the other hand, the core density had no significant effect on both specific strength and elastic modulus. A case study was undertaken by applying the CFRP/ABS/CFRP sandwich structure using the proposed method to manufacture improved dual-tilting clamps of a quadcopter UAV.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1262
JournalPolymers
Volume10
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Nov 2018

Keywords

  • CFRP
  • Composite
  • FDM
  • Neural network
  • Sandwich structure
  • UAV

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • Polymers and Plastics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Additive manufactured sandwich composite/ABS parts for unmanned aerial vehicle applications'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this