Characterization for elastic constants of fused deposition modelling-fabricated materials based on the virtual fields method and digital image correlation

Fused deposition modelling(FDM), a widely used rapid prototyping process, is a promising technique in manufacturing engineering. In this work, a method for characterizing elastic constants of FDM-fabricated materials is proposed. First of all, according to the manufacturing process of FDM, orthotropic constitutive model is used to describe the mechanical behavior. Then the virtual fields method(VFM) is applied to characterize all the mechanical parameters(Q, Q, Q, Q) using the full-field strain,which is measured by digital image correlation(DIC). Since the principal axis of the FDM-fabricated structure is sometimes unknown due to the complexity of the manufacturing process, a disk in diametrical compression is used as the load configuration so that the loading angle can be changed conveniently. To verify the feasibility of the proposed method, finite element method(FEM) simulation is conducted to obtain the strain field of the disk. The simulation results show that higher accuracy can be achieved when the loading angle is close to 30?. Finally, a disk fabricated by FDM was used for the experiment. By rotating the disk, several tests with different loading angles were conducted. To determine the position of the principal axis in each test, two groups of parameters(Q, Q, Q, Q) are calculated by two different groups of virtual fields. Then the corresponding loading angle can be determined by minimizing the deviation between two groups of the parameters. After that, the four constants(Q, Q, Q, Q) were determined from the test with an angle of 27?.

Characterization of material mechanical properties using strain correlation method combined with virtual fields method

The isotropic and anisotropic behaviors are considered as the important formats of the constitutive behaviors,and can also be called the global properties.To improve the identification ability of virtual fields method(VFM)when the global properties are unknown,this paper proposes the strain correlation method(SCM)to determine the global properties before the parameter identification using the VFM.Firstly,the basic principle of SCM is described in detail.Then,the feasibility and accuracy of SCM are verified through the numerical experiments based on the three-point bending configuration and the real experiment of polymethyl methacrylate(PMMA).The influence of the additive Gaussian white noise,local errors in the strain fields,and missing data at the specimen edges on the characterization results are evaluated.The results show that the SCM has good noise immunity and lower accuracy requirements for the strain fields.As an application,the mechanical properties of Ti-6A1-4V alloys fabricated by selective laser melting(SLM)are characterized by the SCM.The results show that the alloys are isotropic,and the isotropic VFM is utilized to determine the mechanical parameters.By using the SCM,the accuracy of identification results can be improved for the isotropic or bidirectional reinforced orthotropic materials when using VFM.