Professor and James Preston Harris Faculty Fellow SHAP3D I/UCRC - Georgia Tech
Fused filament fabrication (FFF) enables the integration of multiple polymers within a single printed structure, opening opportunities for tailored mechanical and functional performance. However, weak interlayer bonding and interfacial incompatibility continue to limit the structural integrity of multi-material prints. Traditional uniaxial tensile testing provides detailed mechanical insights but is too time-intensive for rapid process optimization or comparative studies. To address this challenge, researchers at the NSF Industry–University Cooperative Research Center for the Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D) have developed a High-Throughput Mechanical Analysis (HTMECH) method to accelerate the evaluation of interlayer adhesion and tensile performance in FFF-printed parts. This approach enables the rapid screening of materials and processing conditions by using small-scale puncture and deformation testing on printed films and bilayers, significantly reducing test time while maintaining strong correlation with conventional tensile results. Using various compositions of polycarbonate (PC)-based filaments and polycaprolactone (PCL) blends, the HTMECH method was validated against traditional uniaxial tensile testing of single-material and multi-material specimens. Results demonstrate that higher extrusion temperatures improve interlayer bonding and tensile strength in PC-based systems, while distinct thermal behaviors at the PC–PCL interface highlight the sensitivity of HTMECH to interfacial quality. This work provides a new pathway for rapidly quantifying mechanical performance in additive manufacturing, offering researchers and engineers a faster, more scalable approach to evaluate process–structure–property relationships. The study exemplifies SHAP3D’s mission to bridge scientific understanding with industrial application, enabling more effective development of materials and process combinations for functional multi-material printing.
Learning Objectives:
Explain how interlayer bonding and interface quality affect the mechanical performance of multi-material FFF parts.
Describe how the HTMECH method accelerates mechanical property evaluation compared to conventional tensile testing.
Identify how rapid screening supports process optimization and materials selection in heterogeneous additive manufacturing.
