Structural integrity of polymers processed by additive manufacturing techniques using residual strength diagrams

Motivated by the increasingly important role that polymers have in structural applications, this study aims to analyse the structural integrity of polymers through residual strength diagrams. The polymers analysed have been thermoplastics, Polylactic acid (PLA), Polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified (PET-G) and Polyamide 12 (PA-12), as well as a thermosetting resin, processed through different additive manufacturing techniques: Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) in the case of PLA, PET-G, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) for PA-12 and Digital Light Processing (DLP) for the thermosetting resin. In addition, PA-12 manufactured by injection moulding was also included in this study. To obtain the residual strength diagrams, mechanical tests have been carried out on smooth specimens and on specimens with cracks of different lengths. From the analysis of the results, a prediction has been obtained by fitting a semi-empirical model that describes the structural integrity in the areas of microstructurally short cracks, long cracks and physically short cracks.